He succeeded in 1990 to the Linus Pauling Chair of Chemistry, and he continues also as a professor of physics. His articles and books now number some 300. The work that has won him the Nobel Prize has already been widely recognized by the world scientific community. A member of the National Academy and a host of honor societies, he has also been a Sloan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar. Your greatest honor, however, and the true measure of your profound effect upon the field will be found in the accomplishments of those who build upon your work.
Chemical reactions are a similar case.
The chemists' eagerness to be able to follow chemical reactions in the greatest detail has prompted increasingly advanced technology. Zewail's technique uses what may be described as the world's fastest camera. One femtosecond is 10-15 seconds, that is, 0.000000000000001 seconds, which is to a second as a second is to 32 million years. This area of physical chemistry has been named femtochemistry. Femtochemistry enables us to understand why certain chemical reactions take place but not others.