CHEMISTS from Egypt

Top 2

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Egyptian Chemists of all time. This list of famous Egyptian Chemists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Dorothy Hodgkin (1910 - 1994)

With an HPI of 65.99, Dorothy Hodgkin is the most famous Egyptian Chemist.  Her biography has been translated into 84 different languages on wikipedia.

Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin (née Crowfoot; 12 May 1910 – 29 July 1994) was a Nobel Prize-winning English chemist who advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of biomolecules, which became essential for structural biology. Among her most influential discoveries are the confirmation of the structure of penicillin as previously surmised by Edward Abraham and Ernst Boris Chain; and mapping the structure of vitamin B12, for which in 1964 she became the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Hodgkin also elucidated the structure of insulin in 1969 after 35 years of work. Hodgkin used the name "Dorothy Crowfoot" until twelve years after marrying Thomas Lionel Hodgkin, when she began using "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin". Hodgkin is referred to as "Dorothy Hodgkin" by the Royal Society (when referring to its sponsorship of the Dorothy Hodgkin fellowship), and by Somerville College. The National Archives of the United Kingdom refer to her as "Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin".

2. Ahmed Zewail (1946 - 2016)

With an HPI of 60.36, Ahmed Zewail is the 2nd most famous Egyptian Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 64 different languages.

Ahmed Hassan Zewail (February 26, 1946 – August 2, 2016) was an Egyptian and American chemist, known as the "father of femtochemistry". He was awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on femtochemistry and became the first Egyptian and Arab to win a Nobel Prize in a scientific field, and the second African to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He was the Linus Pauling Chair Professor of Chemistry, a professor of physics, and the director of the Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast Science and Technology at the California Institute of Technology.