without the need for a vacuum chamber. He is also studying surface reactions in nanotechnology at the atomic and molecular level using atomic force microscopy and scanning tunnelling microscopy, both of which can be used without vacuum. Somorjai's expertise in surfaces was used as a consultant to the 2002 Winter Olympics where he gave advice on how to make ice-skating surfaces as fast as possible. Somorjai's research had shed new light on ice, demonstrating that skaters skated on a top-layer of rapidly vibrating molecules, rather than on a layer of liquid water on top of the ice acting as a lubricant, which had previously been the generally accepted explanation for the slipperiness of ice. During his career, Somorjai has published more than one thousand papers and three textbooks on surface chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis. He is now the most-often cited person in the fields of surface chemistry and catalysis. Honors and awards Somorjai was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1979 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983. He was awarded the Wolf Foundation Prize in Chemistry in 1998 for his contribution to chemistry, sharing the honor with Professor Gerhard Ertl of the Fritz-Haber Institute in Berlin. Somorjai was awarded the National Medal of Science for his contribution as a chemist in 2002. The American Chemical Society has also awarded him the Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry and the Adamson Award in Surface Chemistry. In 2002, he was awarded the status of University Professor across the University of California network, an honor he shares with two dozen other academics. In 2004 he won the F.A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research of the American Chemical Society. In 2008 he received the Priestley Medal, the highest award of the American Chemical Society, for his "extraordinarily creative and original contributions to surface science and catalysis". In 2009 he was named a Miller Senior Fellow of the Miller Institute at the University of California Berkeley. He was awarded the prestigious 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Science. In addition he was also awarded in 2010 the ENI New Frontiers of Hydrocarbons Prize and the Honda Prize. The recipient of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Gerhard Ertl, and other members of the surface science community, were surprised and mystified by the Nobel Prize committee's decision to pass over Somorjai, awarding the prize for