A remembrance of ahmed zewail

Although Ahmed Zewail and I were not close friends in the social sense of the term, we had a tremendous mutual respect for one another and became close colleagues while serving on PCAST, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, during the Obama Administration. Prior to that, I had never met Ahmed but knew of his extraordinary accomplishments and stature through the scientific literature and lore. I entered my first term of service on PCAST with Ahmed in the spring of 2009, and to be honest, I did not know what to expect (see Figure 11.1). The hard-driving, Nobel-Prize-winning scientist from Caltech had a reputation, among some, as someone with strong, unwavering opinions, and I was concerned it might be challenging to work with him. I could not have been more wrong….