Chemist's Birthday Gift: Nobel

By KARL RITTER and MATT MOORE The Associated Press

Published: Oct 11, 2007

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN - Gerhard Ertl of Germany won the 2007 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for studies of chemical reactions on solid surfaces, which are key to understanding questions like how pollution eats away at the ozone layer.

Ertl's research laid the foundation of modern surface chemistry, which has helped explain how fuel cells produce energy without pollution, how catalytic converters clean up car exhaust and even why iron rusts, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

His work has paved the way for development of cleaner energy sources and will guide the development of fuel cells, said Astrid Graslund, secretary of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

Ertl, who won the prize on his 71st birthday, said it "is the best birthday present that you can give to somebody."

"I am speechless," he said from his office in Berlin. "I was not counting on this."

Ertl is an emeritus professor at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin. Planck and Haber were Nobel laureates, winning the physics and chemistry prizes in 1918.

The academy said Ertl provided a description of how chemical reactions take place on surfaces and studied some of the most fundamental mysteries in that field.

Ertl showed how to obtain reliable results in this difficult area of research, and his findings applied in both academic studies and industrial development, the academy said.