SWEDEN/ GERMANY: German scientist Gerhard Ertl wins the 2007 Nobel Prize for chemistry

Swedish Academy of Sciences announces that German scientist Gerhard Ertl wins the 2007 Nobel Prize for chemistry. German scientist Gerhard Ertl, who celebrated his 71st birthday on Wednesday (October 10), won the 2007 Nobel Prize for chemistry for his surface chemistry work, the Nobel chemistry panel at the Swedish Academy of Sciences said. The coveted 10 million Swedish crown (1.54 million United States dollars) award recognised his studies on what happens when molecules hit solid surfaces, an important process in the modern world. "This years prize is about chemical reactions on surfaces," Chairman of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science Gunnar Oequist, said. Ertl, who took the Nobel on his 71st birthday, is the former director of the Fritz-Haber Institute at Berlin's Max-Planck Gesellschaft. Asked by the panel what else he got for his birthday, he said he was given a walking stick. The academy said his research into how individual layers of atoms and molecules behave on the surface of catalysts could explain "why iron rusts, how fuel cells function and how the catalysts in our cars work". This was the third of this year's crop of prestigious Nobel prizes handed out each year for achievements in science, literature, economics and peace. "Even now, it is hard to believe. This is something I would call the coronation of scientist's heaven. And for this to happen on my birthday of all days- I cannot imagine anything better," Ertl said. The prizes bearing the name of dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel were first awarded in 1901 in accordance with the 1895 will of the Swedish businessman.

ITN Source | October 10, 2007

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