Omani Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said sent a cable of condolences to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi over the death of renowned Egyptian chemist Ahmed Zewail.

In the cable, the sultan extended condolences to the Egyptian people and Zewail’s family, the Oman News Agency (ONA) reported.

Zewail passed away in the US on Tuesday at the age of 70.

Zewail received his early education in Egypt and earned his BS and MS degrees from the Faculty of Science, Alexandria University, in 1967 and 1969. He received a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1974 and completed an IBM postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley before joining the faculty at Caltech in 1976 as an assistant professor. He became an associate professor in 1978 and a professor in 1982. He was Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Physics from 1990–97, was named professor of physics in 1995, and was named Linus Pauling Professor of Chemistry in 1997.

He won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1999 for his developments in femtoscience, which made it possible to the observe atoms in motion at an extremely small time scale. He is the first Egyptian and Arab to win the prestigious award in chemistry.

Following his Nobel Prize, Zewail and his research group developed “4D” electron microscopy, an even more advanced time measurement of atomic scale events.

The author of 600 articles and 14 books received more than 100 International prizes and awards in his lifetime, including state honors in Egypt and France. He was member in science academies and societies around the globe.

In 2009, US President Barack Obama appointed Zewail to the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and in the same year he was named the first US Science Envoy to the Middle East. Subsequently, in 2013, Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon invited Zewail to join the United Nations Scientific Advisory Board. In Egypt, he served in the Council of Advisors to the President.

He established the Zewail City of Science and Technology on the outskirts of Cairo to spur scientific innovation following the 2011 Egyptian revolution and became its first chair of the Board of Trustees.

Zewail is survived by his wife, Dema Faham, and four children, Maha, Amany, Nabil and Hany.

Source: MENA