GEORGE A. OLAH

George A. Olah



Table of Contents

CHAPTER NO 1: INTRODUCTION3

Statement of the Problem3

Significance of the Study4

Research Questions4

CHAPTER NO 2: LITERATURE REVIEW5

Reason for Noble Prize5

Methanol and its properties6

Bio-methanol6

Ecology7

CHAPTER NO 3: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY8

Secondary Research8

Resources9

Nature of Data9

CHAPTER NO 1: INTRODUCTION

Statement of the Problem

George Olah was born in Budapest on May 22, 1927. Parents named Julius Ola and Magda Krasznai. His father was a lawyer. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Budapest in 1949 and held various positions in the organic chemistry department of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. After the Russian occupation that crushed the attempted revolution of 1956, he moved to America, where he worked in the laboratories of Dow Chemical of Ontario, and later at the University of Cleveland. After the Hungarian uprising in October 1956, he emigrated to Britain, and in 1957 moved to Canada. He worked in the laboratories of the company, "Dow Chemical" in Sarin (Ontario) and Framingheme (Massachusetts, USA).

The most important scientific works are devoted to chemistry of carbocations. Received and studied carbocations, using for this purpose superacids and highly chilled solvents. Got a long-lived tert-butyl cation, which can be examined by physical methods, such as using the nuclear magnetic resonance. In 1994, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on carbocations. It is positively charged fragments from the hydrocarbon molecules that are only given for a fraction of second chemical reactions. Given the short life of the carbocations, it was assumed they could never seen or prepared in appreciable amounts, but in the seventies, the team of Professor Olah managed to prepare stable carbocations using extremadamentes acid components, much more than the "classics" as the sulfuric acid, which are called generically "superacids".

Significance of the Study

This research will help us in analyzing the contributions made by George A. Olah that has lead him in achieving the Nobel Prize. The work done by George A. Olah in the field of chemistry helped various researchers in analyzing the concepts of chemistry.

Research Questions

Following are the questions which we will analyze during our research:

Q: What was the family background of George A. Olah?

Q: How his education leads him to achieve a Nobel Prize?

Q: What are the major contributions of George A. Olah in the field of Chemistry?

CHAPTER NO 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

Since the emergence, of reaction mechanisms in organic chemistry (1920-1930), the carbocations, a species in which carbon carries a positive charge, were invoked as reaction intermediates. These species are highly reactive, and when formed, it is usually in very small amounts, and with lifetimes of no more than a millionth of a second. In 1962, Olah has shown that it is possible to obtain more concentrated solutions of carbocations, using as solvents superacid (such as a mixture of antimony pentafluoride and fluorosulfonic acid SbF 5 / FSO 3 H), substances with acidic properties much stronger than usual acids (10 18 times more acidic than pure sulfuric acid). This has resulted in carbocations at low temperatures (- 100 0 C) and study their magnetic ...