German Wins Nobel In Chemistry

A German scientist whose studies of chemical reactions on solid surfaces have affected agriculture, manufacturing and environmental science won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry today.

Gerhard Ertl of Germany, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, in his office in Berlin today.

Gerhard Ertl, an emeritus professor at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin, received the $1.5 million prize for pioneering work in surface chemistry, which has applications across a broad array of fields. It helps explain the processes in manufacturing computer chips, in the function of automobiles catalytic converters and on the surface of stratospheric ice crystals that have implications for global warming.

The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Dr. Ertls 71st birthday, and he said in remarks broadcast from Stockholm that winning the prize is the best birthday present that you can give to somebody. He was born in 1936 in Bad Cannstadt, Germany.

In an interview with the Associated Press from his office in Berlin, he said, I am speechless, and added, I was not counting on this.

Dr. Ertls work focuses on the encounter between the surfaces of solids and how they interact with gasses. When gas molecules bump up against a surface, they might simply bounce off a surface or be absorbed. Dr. Ertl focused on the ways that the gases might be absorbed and, say, break apart or interact with other captured molecules.

Sophisticated experiments by Dr. Ertl and colleagues over the decades into surfaces, gases and the catalysts that can boost interactions between them helped shed light on the process by which nitrogen-rich fertilizers can be manufactured and ultra-thin layers of semiconductors can be deposited on microchips. The principles lead to a better understanding of how corrosion works in everything from a rusty gate to a containment vessel in a nuclear power plant.

In a statement released early today, Catherine T. Hunt, the president of the American Chemical Society, congratulated Dr. Ertl, calling him a spectacular scientist working in a field that often receives little public attention, and yet has transformed lives in so many ways. She said, In the future, this research will help us tap new sources of renewable fuels, for instance, and produce smaller, more powerful electronics products.

Gabor A. Somorjai, a University Professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, said, Gerhard Ertl has been a colleague and a friend. Hes deserving of the prize.

The Nobel prizes, to be handed out by King Carl XVI Gustaf at a ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10, are being announced this week. On Monday, the prize that recognizes achievement in physiology or medicine went to Mario R. Capecchi, of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City; Oliver Smithies of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and Sir Martin J. Evans of Cardiff University in Wales, for their work that led to the technique of manipulating the genes of mice.

Tuesdays award, in the field of physics, went to Albert Fert, of the Université Paris-Sud in Orsay, France, and Peter Grünberg, of the Institute of Solid State Research at the Jülich Research Center in Germany, whose work in magnetics led to the development of the kinds of hard drives that have allowed computers and music players to shrink to tiny dimensions.

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