http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/949/intrvw.htm
28 May - 3 June 2009
Issue No. 949
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
Mustafa El-Sayed: A life in detail
For one of Egypt's most honoured scientists, the tiny can contain the secrets
of the great
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click to view caption
El-Sayed's son, Ivan, at his wedding; El-Sayed with different members of
his family in Cairo in the old days
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 2008, Professor Mustafa El-Sayed was awarded the US National Medal of
Science -- America's highest honour in the field of science -- for "his seminal
and creative contributions to our understanding of the electronic and optical
properties of nano-materials and to their applications in nano- catalysis and
nano-medicine, for his humanitarian efforts of exchange among countries and for
his role in developing the scientific leadership of tomorrow."
He was the first Arab and Egyptian scientist to gain the distinction.
Today, El-Sayed is Julius Brown Chair and Regents Professor and Director of the
Laser Dynamics Laboratory at Georgia University in Atlanta in the US. In
addition to the 2008 award, he is also well known for the spectroscopy law
named after him and he has been nominated for a Nobel Prize.
Distinctions awarded to him include the 2002 Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical
Physics from the American Chemical Society and the 1990 King Faisal
International Prize in Sciences. He was elected a member of the US National
Academy of Sciences in 1980 for his work on applying laser spectroscopic
techniques to the study of properties and behaviour on the nano-scale, and is a
fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American
Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science
and of the Third World Academy of Science.
El-Sayed was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Physical Chemistry for 25 years
(1980-2005) and served as US editor of the International Review in Physical
Chemistry. He has some 500 publications in major scientific journals to his
name and has supervised over 70 PhD students and 35 postdoctoral fellows, many
of whom now hold prestigious posts in the scientific community.
However, despite this impressive career, El-Sayed is also well known for his
politeness and simplicity. Born in 1933 in Zefta in the Gharbiya governorate,
the youngest child of a mathematics teacher, El-Sayed received his primary and
secondary education in the town in which he was born. One of seven siblings
whose parents died when he was just 10 years old, El-Sayed was raised by his
older brother Mohamed and his wife.
"My brother Mohamed was a great man, and his great love for me gives me
serenity and trust in myself. Moreover, I was surrounded by the love of my
family. However, my parents' deaths led me to think at that young age of life
and death. I lived for many years believing that they would come back to me,
because I thought they could not just have gone like that, leaving me alone.
However, being an orphan made me stronger."
As is often the case in the lives of great men, fortune played a role in
transforming the future El-Sayed had planned for himself. At the outset, he
refused to join a faculty of science because he would have been obliged to
study for five years and then look for a job. If, on the other hand, he joined
the Higher Institute of Teachers he would be appointed a teacher immediately
upon graduation.
However, three months into El-Sayed's stint at the Higher Institute of
Teachers, the students organised a sit-in demanding that the institute be
turned into a full faculty. The then minister of education, Taha Hussein,
approved their demand, and the new faculty became affiliated with Ain Shams
University.
"When that happened, and when I knew that Ain Shams Faculty of Science, which
had just opened, was asking for trainee teachers, I decided to join the new
Faculty and work hard to be a teacher," El-Sayed explains.
"In 1953, I graduated from the Faculty of Science and was appointed a teacher
in the faculty as I had obtained the highest grades of the only four students.
In my opinion, I received the best possible education, at the time better even
than that in the US, because the Faculty of Science was newly established. I
owe a lot to my professors, with whom I had daily personal contact. I used to
spend my whole day at the university, either in lectures or in labs conducting
experiments," he remembers.
"Four months after graduation, I was at the home of a friend waiting to go to
the cinema. Sitting in the living room, I found a copy of Al-Ahram, and,
picking it up, I read an ad from Florida University offering fellowships in the
US in my field. I applied for one and managed to get it."
In 1954, El-Sayed travelled to the US and successfully passed four sets of
exams in order to be deemed equivalent to other students. "I remember that my
professors told me that I was the first foreign student to succeed in these
exams, as most had to study extra courses before passing. This was in large
part due to the teaching I received from my professors in Egypt," El-Sayed says.
He spent four years as a fellow at Florida University, during which time he
married. "At that time there were not many Arab or Muslim women in Florida to
choose from, and my wife was an American from a conservative family," he
explains. After finishing his fellowship, El-Sayed was keen to return to Egypt
in order to raise his children according to Egyptian traditions and be near to
his family.
"My wife supported me, and I never avoided living in Egypt. I returned in 1958
and worked at Ain Shams for a monthly salary of LE15, which was very low even
at that time. I had two children to support, and therefore my wife tried to
find a job to help support the family. She applied to almost 200 foreign
companies, but most of them were about to close and leave the country owing to
Gamal Abdel-Nasser's policy of nationalising the private and foreign sectors,"
he says.
Realising that it was impossible for the family to remain in Egypt, El-Sayed
returned to the US, where he worked in some of the most prestigious American
universities, including Yale, Harvard, the University of California and the
University of Georgia. "Each university offered me the best facilities in terms
of labs, finance and salaries. Meanwhile, we had five children." Today,
El-Sayed's children Laila and Tarek work in the field of industrial chemistry
and engineering, while Dorya works in business and administration, Ivan is a
doctor, and Gamal tragically died when he was just 20 years old.
"I was busy with my research, and my wife provided me with everything I needed
to help me concentrate on my work. She shouldered the task of raising the
children. Though she had a higher certificate, she preferred not to work in
order to look after me and the children," El-Sayed says.
El-Sayed's marriage lasted for almost half a century, his wife dying some four
years ago from cancer after struggling with the disease for five years. During
this time El-Sayed also suffered greatly, the grief over the loss of his wife
motivating him to work in cancer research.
"Her cancer was not diagnosed early, and when we first discovered it the
physicians told her that she had been suffering from it for two years and had
another five years to live. I had worked in nano-technology since graduation,
but it was only after the death of my beloved wife that I started to think
seriously of using it in treating cancer," he says sadly.
According to El-Sayed, he managed to do so with the help of a team of 70
researchers, and after two years of hard work the team developed an effective
treatment for skin cancer using "gold nanorods". Though so far only tested on
animals and some human cells, the treatment can kill cancer cells that appear
under the microscope as light spots, leaving healthy cells unharmed.
"My task as a researcher ended after testing the treatment on animals. The next
step is to test the treatment on humans," El Sayed says. His son Ivan, a
professor of tumour surgery at the University of California, took part in
initial efforts to apply the new treatment to cancerous cells in humans, and
El-Sayed is watching closely.
The treatment will not normally be available for at least seven years after the
US Food and Drug Administration, the only authority issuing licences for the
use of new medicines or treatments on humans in the US, approves it.
However, El-Sayed notes that the technique could be available sooner in China,
as most of the researchers on the team were Chinese. He believes that China
will lead the world in scientific research in the years to come. It already
spends billions of dollars on research and sends thousands of students to study
in the US each year. "The coming scientific technology will emerge from Asia,"
he emphasises.
As for Egypt, El-Sayed says there are creative and even genius-like minds in
the country, but that it does little to encourage them.
"Scientific research is not only a matter of minds. Just as important is
providing the millions of dollars for labs and equipment and for the salaries
necessary for researchers. How can you expect creative work from a researcher
whose mind is preoccupied with the price of bread, or with petrol for his car,
or with the other expenses of life?"
"Academics in the faculties of science in Egypt spend eight hours a day
lecturing. They need to be free for at least two semesters to conduct research.
There should be two systems: one for teaching and another for conducting
research. Scientific researchers also need to travel frequently abroad to
attend seminars and conferences."
Egypt, El-Sayed says, has much to learn from the Arab Gulf countries. These
countries, especially Saudi Arabia, have realised that the oil is expected to
run out in 40 to 50 years, and therefore are investing money in scientific
research. "Scientific research in Saudi Arabia is progressing rapidly," he
says, "because the Saudi government has allocated $1 billion annually for such
research. Each researcher who has a valuable proposal for scientific research
is given $5 million over five years for research and salaries," El-Sayed
maintains.
El-Sayed holds that another impediment to scientific research in Egypt is the
system of education as a whole. University and school education in Egypt is
"disastrous" because it depends on teaching students to learn by heart and not
to think for themselves.
"Computers can store information better than humans, but computers cannot
think. Any civilisation or development in any country is based on thinking.
Education in Egypt is overwhelmed with the excessive accumulation of useless
information in the minds of students who do not understand most of it, but
learn by heart in order to succeed in exams, which, moreover, are commonly
overwhelmed with cheating."
El-Sayed describes the situation in the faculties of science in Egyptian
universities as being even worse, because students do not gain skills or
practical training. Many do not even know where the library is. Moreover, there
are too many students, the labs are in a very bad condition, and the syllabuses
are out of date. "Students in Egyptian universities are still studying
according to syllabuses that have long ceased to be taught elsewhere in the
world," he says.
El-Sayed believes that spending money on scientific research is an investment
in the future, because it will improve social and economic conditions in the
long run. "Industries in Egypt will never improve if we do not improve our
scientific research. Unemployment will increase, and we will import most of
what we need and cease to export anything. We have to provide a reasonable
budget for scientific research immediately, particularly because the population
is increasing and resources are decreasing," he warns.
El-Sayed adds that US President Barack Obama has decreased most national
expenses in the US following the financial crisis, apart from that for
scientific research. This he has increased, believing that scientific research
will be key to weathering the crisis.
El-Sayed nominated the Egyptian scientist Ahmed Zewail for the 1999 Nobel Prize
in Chemistry. However, he himself, he says, has never thought about being
nominated for or of receiving the prize. "I am working hard for human beings
and not for a Nobel Prize, which should be given to those that discover the
genetic causes of cancer," he says.
El-Sayed's main aim today is to continue developing treatments for cancer,
especially for the poor who cannot afford expensive treatments. His new cancer
treatment is potentially cheap, he says, since one gram of gold could treat
1,000 patients, even if the cost of equipment, physicians and nursing will
increase the expense.
The World Health Organisation expects that by 2030 the number of cancer
patients will reach 75 million. International statistics reveal that 50 per
cent of men who live to the age of 70 will be diagnosed with cancer, while one
third of women of that age will suffer the same.
El-Sayed says that cancer has existed since the era of the Pharaohs and that it
is due to genetic causes. "Now I am working on new research to enter the cancer
cell itself in order to discover its secrets, particularly what makes a healthy
cell become cancerous. Finding out exactly what goes on in infected cells
should help us to find a way to stop the occurrence of disease from the very
beginning," he says.
Asked what lies at the root of his own success, this renowned scientist
attributes what he has accomplished to the blessings of God and to working over
15 hours daily throughout his career.
Interview by Sahar El-Bahr
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
