Install I Love EgyptAdd it to your home screen · إضافة إلى الشاشة الرئيسية
Home / Egyptian Figures / Mostafa El-Sayed
The Egyptian-American chemist behind the "El-Sayed rule" — a pioneer of nanoscience who turned gold nanoparticles into a weapon against cancer, and a US National Medal of Science laureate. Born 1933.الكيميائي المصري الأمريكي صاحب «قاعدة السيد» — رائدٌ في علم النانو حوّل جسيمات الذهب النانوية إلى سلاح ضدّ السرطان، وحائزٌ على وسام العلوم الوطني الأمريكي. مواليد 1933
Mostafa El-Sayed is an Egyptian-American physical chemist and one of the founding figures of modern nanoscience. Over a research career spanning some six decades, he uncovered fundamental rules about how molecules respond to light, then helped pioneer the strange and powerful world of the nanoscale — work that has led, among much else, to a promising new way of fighting cancer with tiny particles of gold. His name is permanently attached to a law of spectroscopy, the "El-Sayed rule," and his contributions earned him the United States' highest scientific honour.
مصطفى السيد كيميائيٌّ فيزيائي مصري أمريكي وأحد مؤسّسي علم النانو الحديث. على مدى مسيرة بحثية امتدّت نحو ستّة عقود، كشف قواعد أساسية عن كيفية استجابة الجزيئات للضوء، ثم أسهم في ريادة عالم النانو الغريب والقوي — وهو عملٌ أفضى، ضمن أمور كثيرة، إلى طريقة جديدة واعدة لمكافحة السرطان بجسيمات صغيرة من الذهب. واسمه مرتبطٌ على الدوام بقانون في علم الطيف هو «قاعدة السيد»، ونالت إسهاماته أرفع وسام علمي في الولايات المتحدة.
Beginnings · البدايات
An Egyptian chemist who built a life in science.كيميائيٌّ مصري بنى حياةً في العلم.
El-Sayed was born on 8 May 1933 in Zifta, in Egypt's Gharbia province. He earned his B.Sc. from Ain Shams University in Cairo in 1953, then moved to the United States for his doctorate at Florida State University, where he studied under the noted spectroscopist Michael Kasha. After research stints at Harvard, Yale, and Caltech, he joined the faculty of UCLA in 1961, teaching there for more than three decades. In 1994 he moved to the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he became the Julius Brown Chair and Regents' Professor and founded the Laser Dynamics Laboratory that he still directs.
The El-Sayed Rule · قاعدة السيد
A discovery that bears his name to this day.اكتشافٌ يحمل اسمه حتى اليوم.
El-Sayed first made his name in laser spectroscopy — the study of how matter interacts with light — and photochemistry. His most famous early contribution is the "El-Sayed rule," a principle of spectroscopy, named in his honour, that helps explain the rates at which molecules shift between different excited electronic states after absorbing light. It became a standard tool taught to chemistry students around the world. From 1980 to 2004 he also served as editor-in-chief of the prestigious Journal of Physical Chemistry, raising its influence so much that it eventually split into two separate journals.
The Nanoscale · عالم النانو
Where gold and silver behave like nothing else.حيث يسلك الذهب والفضة سلوكًا لا مثيل له.
El-Sayed became a pioneer of nanoscience — the study of materials at the scale of a billionth of a metre, where substances behave in strange and surprising new ways. His work focused on plasmonic nanoparticles of gold and silver, showing how their shape — rods, spheres, and more — dramatically changes the way they absorb light and drive chemical reactions. These insights opened up wide applications in nanocatalysis (speeding up reactions) and nanomedicine, and placed him among the most highly cited chemists of his generation, with more than 600 scientific publications.
Gold Against Cancer · الذهب ضدّ السرطان
A painful loss that redirected his research.خسارةٌ مؤلمة غيّرت وجهة أبحاثه.
El-Sayed's most personal contribution grew out of tragedy. After his wife died of cancer in 2005, he turned his deep knowledge of nanomaterials toward fighting the disease. He and his team developed a treatment that attaches gold nanorods to cancer cells; when struck by laser light, the tiny gold particles heat up and destroy the cells around them — a technique known as photothermal therapy, explored especially for skin cancer. For his body of work, El-Sayed received the 2007 US National Medal of Science, presented at the White House, as well as the King Faisal International Prize, the Priestley Medal, and the Ahmed Zewail Prize named for his fellow Egyptian-American chemist Ahmed Zewail. Now in his nineties, he remains an active researcher and a celebrated mentor of younger scientists.
Quick Facts · حقائق سريعة
Sources include the US National Science & Technology Medals Foundation, the American Chemical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Georgia Tech.