Hungarian-American Nobel winner George A. Olah dies aged 89

Published March 17, 2017

George A. Olah, the Hungarian-American winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1994, has died at age 89.

The Hungarian Academy of Sciences, of which Olah was an honorary member, said he died on Wednesday in Beverly Hills, citing information from Robert Aniszfeld, managing director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute at the University of Southern California. Olah was the institute's founding director. No information was available on cause of death.

Olah, a Holocaust survivor who escaped Hungary after the 1956 anti-Soviet revolution, won the Nobel for his contribution to the chemistry of carbocations — unstable carbon molecules.

The Swedish Academy said his work led to new methods, for example, for producing more easily biodegradable hydrocarbons with high octane numbers.

Olah was born in Budapest on May 22, 1927.

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