Gabor A. Somorjai

Gabor A. Somorjai (born May 4, 1935 in Budapest, Hungary) is currently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and is a leading researcher in the field of surface chemistry. Somorjai won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 1998 for his contributions to the field and was awarded a National Medal of Science in 2002. He is also the 2008 winner of the Priestley Medal. Somorjai was born in Budapest in 1935 to Jewish parents. He was saved from... more

Gabor A. Somorjai (born May 4, 1935 in Budapest, Hungary) is currently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and is a leading researcher in the field of surface chemistry. Somorjai won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 1998 for his contributions to the field and was awarded a National Medal of Science in 2002. He is also the 2008 winner of the Priestley Medal. Somorjai was born in Budapest in 1935 to Jewish parents. He was saved from the Nazis when his mother sought the assistance of Raoul Wallenberg in 1944 who issued Swedish passports to Somorjai's mother, himself and his sister saving them from the Nazi death camps. While Somorjai's father ended up in the camp system, he was fortunate to survive but many of Somorjai's extended family ended up in the camp system. He was studying chemical engineering at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in 1956. As a participant in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Somorjai left Hungary to go to the US after the Soviet... less