Gábor A. Somorjai

Gábor A. Somorjai spent his career at Berkeley figuring out how chemical reactions actually happen on metal surfaces, founding much of what's now understood about heterogeneous catalysis, the process behind industrial reactions from oil refining to emissions control. His work earned him the Wolf Prize, the National Medal of Science, the Priestley Medal and the American Chemical Society's Nichols Medal, recognition across the discipline's major honors over five decades of research.