Mathew Thomas - A life of magic chemistry: autobiographical reflections including post-Nobel Prize years and the methanol economy

George A. Olah

with

Thomas Mathew

Copyright 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Olah, George A. (George Andrew), 1927
A life of magic chemistry : autobiographical reflections including post-Nobel Prize years and the methanol economy / George A. Olah with Thomas Mathew. Second updated edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-118-84003-0 (cloth)
1. Olah, George A. (George Andrew), 1927 2. ChemistsUnited StatesBiography. I. Mathew, Thomas, 1961 II. Title.
QD22.O43A3 2015
540.92dc23
[B]

2015005387

Cover Oil portrait by Kornl Zmb

To Judy,

who made it all possible

My grandchildren Kaitlyn, Justin and Peter (December 2013)

My wife Judy and friends urged me to update my original autobiography published in 2001 by Wiley. In this second edition, I included much of my original autobiographical recollections of my life and my work in chemistry, adding particularly those of the intervening years. But I also added some of my more general thoughts on science. These touch on topics including the broader meaning of science in the quest for understanding and knowledge as well as their limitations. Science as a human endeavor means the search for knowledge about the physical world and the natural sciences governing it (both physical and life sciences). It does not include the spiritual or supernatural (including the area of philosophy). Inevitably, however, this leads to such fundamental questions of how it all started and developed: Was there a beginning? Was our being planned by a higher intelligence? It is an exciting struggle with these and related questions while trying to balance what we know through science and what we must admit are beyond us. My thoughts are those of a scientist who always tried, however imperfectly, to maintain his early interest in the classics, history, philosophy, and the arts. In recent years, I have tried increasingly to fill in some of the gaps, but a life actively pursuing science inevitably imposes constraints on the time that one can spend reading and studying outside one's own field of specialization. Of course, I realize only too well my limitations and the lack of depth of my background in some of these areas. Therefore, I have tried not to overreach, and I will limit my thoughts to my own understanding and views, however imperfect they may be.

This book is mainly about my life in search of chemistry. Because some of my work centered on the discovery and use of extremely strong superacids, some of which are now also called magic acids, I choose again the title A Life of Magic Chemistry. It also reflects, however, in a more general way, on the exciting and sometimes indeed even magic nature of chemistry, which with its extremely broad scope cuts through many of the varied sciences, truly being a central one. In recent years, I concentrated my interest to find new solutions to our depleting fossil fuel resources, particularly substituting oil with methanol in the scope of the Methanol Economy.

It was a long journey that led me from the banks of the Danube in Budapest, through Cleveland, to the shore of the Pacific Ocean in Los Angeles, with a side trip to Stockholm. Sometimes I still wonder how life unfolds in ways we could not have planned or even foreseen.

I thank my publisher for the interest in publishing, after nearly 15 years, an updated second edition of my original autobiography. Ms. Anita Lekhwani and Cecilia Tsai have rendered their help to get the updated second edition in print. My wife, sons, friends, and colleagues helped to improve the manuscript and commented on its many shortcomings. My particular thanks go to Jessie May, my administrative assistant, who helped in the preparation of the manuscripts and progress of the book. But mainly, I thank my colleague and friend Dr. Thomas Mathew, who through his outstanding effort made the second updated and extended edition possible.

George A. Olah

Los Angeles

July 2014

If we look back on the history of human efforts for understanding of our world and of the universe, these look like lofty goals that, I believe, mankind will never fully achieve. In earlier times, things were more simple. The great Greek thinkers and those who followed in their footsteps were able to combine the knowledge available of the physical world with their thoughts of the spiritual world and thus develop their overall philosophy. This changed with the expansion of scientific inquiry and quest for knowledge in the seventeenth century. By the twentieth century, few philosophers, except those who also had some background in the sciences, could claim sufficient knowledge of the physical world to even attempt serious consideration of its meaning. This opened up for some scientists, particularly physicists, the claim to center stage, suggesting that only science can attempt to give answers to such fundamental questions as the origin and meaning of the universe, life, our being as intelligent species, and the understanding of the universal laws governing the physical and biological world. In reality, however, humankind with all its striving for such knowledge probably never will reach full understanding. For me this is readily acceptable. It seems only honest to admit our limitations because of which human knowledge can reach only a certain point. Our knowledge will continue to expand, but it hardly can be expected to give answers to many of the fundamental questions of mankind. Chemists do not need to claim fundamental insights in the ways in which the atoms of the elements were formed after the initial big bang, because they are concerned only with their eventual assembly into molecules (compounds, materials). They can avoid the question of whether all these were planned and created with a predetermined goal. I will, however, briefly reflect on my own views and thoughts. They reflect to the struggle and inevitable compromises, leading to what I considerat least for mean acceptable overall realization that we, in all probability, never can expect a full understanding.