A Century of Chemical Dynamics Traced through the Nobel Prizes. 1999: Ahmed H. Zewail

The 1999 Nobel Prize was awarded to Ahmed Zewail "for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy." His pioneering investigation of fundamental chemical reactions using ultra-short flashes allowed chemists, for the first time, to monitor reactions on the time scale on which the atoms are actually moving as bonds are broken and formed. The fundamental limit of femtosecond resolution represents the culmination of a century of progress in chemical dynamics that began with the first Nobel Prize awarded to Jacobus van't Hoff in 1901.