George Andrew Olah - Carbocations and Chemistry
George Andrew Olah was born May 22, 1927, in Budapest, Hungary, nine years after the close of World War I and two years before the Great Depression. His parents were Julius Olah and Magda Krasznai. He grew up during tumultuous years, which included World War II, when Hungary was again on the losing side of a war.
The Olah family lived a middle-class life and Olah received his early education at a Catholic Gymnasium where he studied humanities and languages. He then attended the Technical University of Budapest. He chose a major in chemistry. The university followed a rigorous program where only the most successful students were allowed to remain. Small class sizes and an emphasis on achievement meant Olah received a good foundation for his research. After graduation, he became an unpaid research assistant to his professor, Geza Zemplen. Olah was interested in fluorine chemistry. He needed to pay for his own material and equipment. When the fumes from his projects became too noxious, Zemplen agreed to allocate space that included a balcony, so that the odors could be vented. Olah referred to this as his "balcony laboratory".
In 1949, he married Judith Lengyel. They had known each other since childhood, and she was a secretary at the Technical University.
Since the Soviet approach to research favored research institutes rather than university settings, in 1954, Olah joined the Central Chemical Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and started a research project in organic chemistry. Also in 1954, his first son was born, George John.
The popular uprising in 1956 brought more unrest to Hungary. The Olahs, and 200,000 other Hungarians, left the country. The Olah family went first to London, then Montreal, then Sarnia, Ontario, where Olah worked for Dow Chemical. He rose to the title of company Scientist. His second son, Ronald Peter, was born in 1959. Olah began his work on carbocations at this time.
Olah transferred to the Dow facility in Massachusetts in 1964, and then joined the faculty at Western Reserve University in Cleveland in 1965 as professor and department Chair. When the chemistry departments of Western Reserve University and Case Institute of Technology were merged in 1967, Olah served at Chair of the joint department until 1969 when he returned to research fulltime.
In 1976, he accepted an appointment to the University of Southern California at Los Angeles in the newly established Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, where he is currently Distinguished Professor and Loker Chair in Organic Chemistry.
Olah was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1994 for his research in carbocation chemistry and for uncovering new ways to use hydrocarbons in the
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