George A. Olah

Olah developed methods using superacids to stabilize carbocations—positively charged carbon intermediates—long enough to study them directly. Previously, these fleeting intermediates were theorized but had never been observed, and Olah's work allowed chemists to characterize their structures and roles in chemical reactions.

Olah received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1994 for his contributions to carbocation chemistry. The award specifically recognized his use of superacids to generate and study carbocations, which had been considered too unstable to observe.

Superacids are acids stronger than 100% sulfuric acid, and Olah used them to protonate hydrocarbons, creating long-lived carbocations that could be characterized with spectroscopic methods. One of the most famous superacids used in his research was magic acid, a mixture of fluorosulfuric acid and antimony pentafluoride.

After emigrating from Hungary, Olah spent much of his career at the University of Southern California, where he joined the faculty in 1977 and directed the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute. He had previously worked at Case Western Reserve University and earlier at Dow Chemical Company in Canada after fleeing Hungary in the aftermath of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.