Dr.Ahmed Zewail was born and raised in Egypt on February 26,1946,he received both his bachelor's(B.S. with honors in 1967) and master's degrees(M.S. in 1969) from Alexandria University. He earned his doctorate(PHD. in 1974) from the University of Pennsylvania and joined the Caltech faculty in 1976 after two years as an IBM Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. He has a family of four childern and his wife Dema Zewail, a physician in public health (UCLA)

       Dr.Zewail is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA); American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Third World Academy of Science (Italy); and the European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (France); the Pontifical Academy of Sciences; and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and Sigma Xi Society. He is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

       He has received numerous international prizes and awards like the Benjamin Franklin Prize in 1998, the Robert A. Welch Award in 1997, the King Faisal Prize in 1989, the Wolf Prize in 1993, the Carl Zeiss Award in 1992, the Leonardo da Vinci Award of Excellence in 1995, the Bonner Chemiepreis Award, and the Medal of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

       Also he received national prizes like the Harrison-Howe Award, the ACS Peter Debye Award in 1996, the E. Bright Wilson Award, and the Buck-Whitney Award. The American Physical Society has honored Dr. Zewail with the Earle K. Plyler Prize and the Herbert P. Broida Prize in 1995. He has also received the Chemical Sciences Award from the National Academy of Sciences. In 1995, the president of Egypt, H. Mubarak, honored Dr.Zewail with the Order of Merit, First Class.

       Dr.Ahmed H. Zewail has won the 1999 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work in viewing and studying chemical reactions at the atomic level as they occur.