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Professor George Andrew Olah was born on May 22, 1927 in Budapest, Hungary, where he also received his education culminating in a Ph.D. in 1949 from the Technical University under the guidance of the late Professor Geza Zemplen. After serving as an Assistant, then Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Technical University, he became Head of the Department of Organic Chemistry and Associate Scientific Director of the Central Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest in 1954. In 1956 he joined the staff of the Dow Chemical Company as a Senior Research Scientist where he completed his comprehensive multivolume work on the Friedel-Crafts Reaction. His growing reputation as an expert (at that time, the expert) in the chemistry of carbocations in stabilizing solvents was recognized by a call in 1965 to serve as Professor and Chairman of the Chemistry Department at Western Reserve University. He presided during the merger of that institution with Case Institute of Technology during 1967 and served for ten years as C.F. Mabery Distinguished Professor of Research in Chemistry in the new Case Western Reserve University. In 1977 he became Professor of Chemistry and Co-scientific Director of the Hydrocarbon Research Institute, the University of Southern California, where he is now also a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry.
His phenomenal productivity (author of over 700 research papers, 70 patents, and numerous books), and his seminal contributions to both technique and understanding in the study of the structure and synthetic applications of stabilized carbocations have brought him many awards and special lectureships including the American Chemical Society award in Petroleum Chemistry (1964), the Leo Hendrick Baekeland Award (1967), the Morley Medal (1970), the American Chemical Society Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry (1979), Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Award for Senior U.S. Scientists (1979), FMC Lecturer, Princeton University (1972), Francis Clifford Phillips Lecturer, University of Pittsburgh (1977), Centenary Lecturer, Chemical Society, London (1977-78), Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, University of Utah (1981), and many visiting Professorships.
Professor Olah is a member of the American, British, German, Dutch and Swiss Chemical Societies, the Chemical Institute of Canada, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sigma Xi, and the National Academy of Sciences. We are proud to add the First Dow Lectureship to Professor Olah's long list of honors.