Gabor Somorjai

1935 - 2025

Gabor Somorjai
05/04/1935 - 07/07/2025
Gabor Somorjai passed away peacefully on July 7, 2025 at the age of 90. Born and raised in Budapest, Hungary, Gabor and his immediate family survived the Holocaust. He was saved from the Nazis when his mother sought the assistance of Raoul Wallenberg in 1944 who issued Swedish passports to his family. Gabor immigrated to the United States with his beloved Judith during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. Gabor enrolled in graduate study at U.C. Berkeley and obtained his PhD in Chemistry in 1960. He joined IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center staff in Yorktown Heights, New York for a few years but returned to Berkeley as an assistant professor in 1964 and remained at Berkeley for the rest of his career. In 2002, he was named a University Professor by the UC Board of Regents.
Gabor was a renowned chemist whose research advanced surface chemistry important for energy, manufacturing and clean water, in addition to a range of other contributions. He has been a leader in catalysis for more than five decades. He received the Fermi Award in 2023 for key contributions in molecular studies of surfaces through the use of single crystals, the development of techniques for quantitative determinations of surface structure and establishing the molecular foundations of heterogeneous metal catalysis.
Among his many honors, Gabor received the Wolf Foundation Prize in chemistry in 1998, the National Medal of Science in 2001, the Priestley Medal in 2008, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1979.
Gabor educated more than 130 Ph.D. students and 250 postdoctoral fellows. He was the author of more than 1200 scientific papers in the fields of surface chemistry, heterogeneous catalysis, and solid state chemistry, and wrote four textbooks.
He loved CAL Berkeley, family trips to Maui, reading historical biographies and the San Francisco 49ers.
Gabor is survived by his wife of 68 years Judith, his daughter Nicole Alivisatos (Paul), his son John Somorjai (Hilary), and his beloved grandchildren: Stephanie (Michael), Clara, Ben and Diana, and great grandchild Margot.