Ahmed E. Zewail of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on the ultrafast imaging of molecular processes. Zewail demonstrated that femtosecond-scale pulses of laser light can be used to observe the atomic motions in a molecule during a chemical reaction. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm called Zewail's achievement "pioneering" and characterized it as a revolution in the field of chemistry.