Nobel Prize-winning scientist George A Olah, 89

George A Olah, whose work won a Nobel Prize in chemistry and paved the way for more effective oil refining and ways of producing less polluting forms of petrol, has died aged 89.

Mr Olah died at his Beverly Hills home, according to the University of Southern California’s Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, of which he was founding director. No cause of death was provided.

Mr Olah’s research brought him the 1994 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his ground-breaking study of the unstable carbon molecules known as carbocations.

Mr Olah received the Nobel Prize for his work on superacids, research that led to his observation of carbocations – an unstable, fleeting chemical species that he discovered how to stabilise long enough to study its properties.

Born in Budapest on May 22 1927, Mr Olah said he had little interest in chemistry as a youngster, preferring to learn languages.

It was at the Technical University of Budapest where his interest in science was finally piqued.

He went to work for the Central Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Science.

He was leading a research team there in 1956 when the Soviet Union crushed the Hungarian Uprising and he and his family fled to the US.

Eventually moving to Michigan, he began research on carbocations while employed by Dow Chemical Co.

He is survived by his wife, Judith Olah, sons George and Ronald and several grandchildren.

Nobel Prize-winning chemist George Olah.