Professor Oktay Sinanoglu has been nominated twice for Nobel Prize. He became the first Turkish member of the American National Academy of Science and Art. He is a Turkish scientist of theoretical chemistry and molecular biology. At age 28, he became the youngest person in 20th century at Yale University to attain status as a full professor. Sinanoglu was born in 1935 in Bari, Italy where his father served as a consul general. The family returned to Turkey at the start of World War II in 1939. In 1953, he attended TED Yenisehir Lisesi high school in Ankara, and after graduating won a scholarship for education of chemistry in the United States. In 1956, he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in chemical engineering with the highest rank. In only eight months, he graduated from MIT in 1957 with the highest degree. In two years, he finished his doctorate at UC Berkeley. In 1960, Sinanoglu started working as associate professor at Yale University. He theorized the "Many-Electron Theory of Atoms and Molecules" in 1962 by solving a mathematical theorem that had been unsolved for 50 years. The same year, he earned the Alfred P. Sloan prize. He was appointed full professor in 1961. He got his second life-long chair in Yale in Molecular Biology. Professor Sinanoglu was the first to earn the Alexander von Humboldt's Science Prize in 1973. In 1975, he won the award of Japan's International Outstanding Scientist.
In the 1980s, he theorized a new method from 180 theories concerning mathematics and physics, considered revolutionary, which enables chemists to predict the ways in which chemicals combine in the laboratory and to solve other complex problems in chemistry using simple pictures and periodic tables. Also, he took his place in the Academy of Arts & Sciences. In 1993, he moved to Turkey to teach at the Yildiz Teknik Universitesi, and officially retired at the age of 67. Yet his scientific researches have not ceased. He received several international and local awards concerning his scientific and social contributions and efforts. He has been to many places including Asia and Latin America. He tried to establish strong communications between Japan, India and Turkey. Because of his efforts, he was given the title "Special Emissary" of Japan-Turkey. He worked for better education, purified language in Turkey most of his life and strived to form a conscious generation.
