A LIFE OF MAGIC CHEMISTRY A LIFE OF MAGIC CHEMISTRY Autobiographical Reflections of a Nobel Prize Winner George A. Olah A JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC., PUBLICATION New York • Chichester • Weinheim • Brisbane • Singapore • Toronto This book is printed on acid-free paper. ⅜ϱ Copyright ᭧ 2001 by Wiley-Interscience. All rights reserved. Published simultaneously in Canada. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4744. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-0012, (212) 850-6011, fax (212) 850-6008, E-Mail: PERMREQ @ WILEY.COM. For ordering and customer service call 1-800-CALL-WILEY. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Olah, George A. (George Andrew), 1927– A life of magic chemistry : autobiographical reflections of a nobel prize winner / George A. Olah. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-471-15743-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Olah, George A. (George Andrew), 1927–. 2. Chemists—United States—Biography. I. Title. QD22.043 A3 2000 540Ј.92—dc21 [B] 00-043638 Printed in the United States of America. 10987654321 To Judy, who made it all possible My grandchildren, Peter and Kaitlyn (July 1999). Contents Preface ix Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Chapter 2. Perspectives on Science 4 Chapter 3. Chemistry: The Multifaceted Central Science 21 Chapter 4. Growing up in Hungary and Turning to Chemistry 38 Chapter 5. Early Research and Teaching: Departing the Shadow of Emil Fischer 51 Chapter 6. Move to North America: Industrial Experience While Pursuing the Elusive Cations of Carbon 64 Chapter. 7. Return to Academia—The Cleveland Years: Carbocations, Magic Acid, and Superacid Chemistry 84 Chapter 8. Moving to Los Angeles: Building the Loker Institute— Hydrocarbons and Hydrocarbon Research 108 Chapter 9. ‘‘Every Scientist Needs Good Enemies’’: The Nonclassical Ion Controversy and Its Significance 137 Chapter 10. From Kekule´’s Four-Valent Carbon to Five- and Higher-Coordinate Hypercarbon Chemistry 153 Chapter 11. The Nobel Prize: Learning to Live with It and Not Rest on Laurels 169 Chapter 12. Post-Nobel Years: From Superacids to Superelectrophiles 188 vii viii ࡗ CONTENTS Chapter 13. Societal and Environmental Challenges of Hydrocarbons: Direct Methane Conversion, Methanol Fuel Cell, and Chemical Recycling of Carbon Dioxide 205 Chapter 14. Gone My Way 222 Appendix My Previous Books for References and Additional Reading 259 Index 261 Preface My wife Judy, my children, and my friends urged me for some time to write about my life and the fascinating period of science I was lucky to be part of. For years I resisted, mainly because I was still fully occupied with research, teaching, and various other commitments. I also felt it was not yet time to look back instead of ahead. However, I slowly began to realize that, because none of us knows how much time is still left, it might be ill advised to say ‘‘it is not yet the right time.’’ I therefore started to collect material and to organize my thoughts for a book. It soon became clear that this project would be very different from any writing I had done before. I recognized that my goal was not only to give autobiographical recollections of my life and my career in chemistry but also to express some of my more general thoughts. These touch on varied topics, including the broader meaning of science in the quest for understanding and knowledge as well as their limitations. Science as a human endeavor means the search for knowledge about the physical world. Inevitably, however, this leads to such fundamental questions of how it all started and developed: Was there a beginning? Was our being planned by a higher intelligence? We struggle with these and related questions while trying to balance what we know through science and what we must admit is beyond us. My thoughts are those of a scientist who always tried to maintain his early interest in the classics, history, philosophy, and the arts. In recent years I have particularly tried to fill in some of the gaps; a life actively pursuing science inevitably imposes constraints on the time that one can spend reading and studying outside one’s own field of specialization. Of course, I realize only too well my limitations and the lack of depth in my background in some of these areas. Therefore, I have tried not to overreach, and I will limit my thoughts to my own under- standing and views, however imperfect they may be. This book is mainly about my life in search of new chemistry. Because some of my work centered around the discovery of extremely strong ‘‘superacids,’’ which are sometimes also called ‘‘magic acids,’’ I chose the title A Life of ix x ࡗ PREFACE Magic Chemistry. It also reflects in a more general way the exciting and some- times indeed even ‘‘magic’’ nature of chemistry, which with its extremely broad scope cuts through many of the sciences, truly being a central science. It was a long journey that led me from Budapest through Cleveland to Los Angeles with a side trip to Stockholm. Sometimes I still wonder how life unfolds in ways we could not have planned or foreseen. I thank my publisher for the patience and understanding shown for my delays in writing the book. My editors Darla Henderson, Amie Jackowski Tibble, and Camille Pecoul Carter helped greatly to make the book a reality. My wife, sons, and friends helped to improve the manuscript and commented on its many shortcomings. My particular thanks go to Reiko Choy, my long- time secretary, who, before her retirement, miraculously produced a proper manuscript from my messy handwritten drafts and thus allowed the book to be completed. I similarly thank Jessie May, who took over and carried through with great efficiency and enthusiasm needed revisions and corrections. George A. Olah Los Angeles, October 2000 ࡗ 1 ࡗ Introduction If we look back on the history of human efforts to understand our world and the universe, these look like lofty goals that, I believe, man- kind will never fully achieve. In earlier times, things were more simple. The great Greek thinkers and those who followed in their footsteps were able to combine the knowledge available of the physical world with their thoughts of the ‘‘spiritual world’’ and thus develop their overall philosophy. This changed with the expansion of scientific in- quiry and quest for knowledge in the seventeenth century. By the twen- tieth century, few philosophers, except those who also had some back- ground in the sciences, could claim sufficient knowledge of the physical world to even attempt serious consideration of its meaning. This opened the claim to center stage to some scientists, particularly phys- icists, suggesting that only science can attempt to give answers to such fundamental questions as the origin and meaning of the universe, life, our being as intelligent species and the understanding of the universal laws governing the physical and biological world. In reality, however, humankind with all its striving for such knowledge probably will never reach full understanding. For me this is readily acceptable. It seems only honest to admit our limitations because of which human knowl- edge can reach only a certain point. Our knowledge will continue to expand, but it hardly can be expected to give answers to many of the fundamental questions of mankind. Nuclear scientists developed in- sights in the ways in which the atoms of the elements were formed after the initial ‘‘big bang,’’ but chemists are concerned with the assem- bly into molecules (compounds, materials) and their transformations. They can avoid the question of whether all this was planned and 1 2 ࡗ A LIFE OF MAGIC CHEMISTRY created with a predetermined goal. I will, however, briefly reflect on my own views and thoughts. They reflect my struggle and inevitable compromises, leading to what I consider—at least for me—an ac- ceptable overall realization that we, in all probability, never can expect a full understanding. I was lucky to be able to work during and contribute to one of the most exciting periods of science, that of the second half of the twen- tieth century. I was also fortunate that I was mostly able to pursue my interests in chemistry, following my own way and crossing conven- tional boundaries. Frequently, I left behind what Thomas Kuhn called safe, ‘‘normal science’’ in pursuit of more exciting, elusive new vistas. How many people can say that they had a fulfilling, happy life doing what they love to do and were even paid for it? Thus, when people ask me whether I still work, my answer is that I do, but chemistry was never really work for me. It was and still is my passion, my life. I do not have many other interests outside chemistry, except for my family and my continuous learning about a wide range of topics through read- ing. Thus the long hours I still spend on science come naturally to me and are very enjoyable. If, one day, the joy and satisfaction that chem- istry gives me should cease or my capabilities decline so that I can make no further meaningful contributions (including helping my younger colleagues in their own development and efforts), I will walk away from it without hesitation.