A Conversation with Adam Heller

Adam Heller, Research Professor and Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and Chief Science Officer at SynAgile Corp., talks about his life and career with Elton J. Cairns, Professor of the Graduate School, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and Faculty Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. Heller discusses his and his family’s deportation from Hungary to Switzerland during the second World War, and their move to British Mandate Palestine, which eventually became Israel. He then recounts how his research allowed him to lead the development of one of the very first lithium batteries, liquid lasers, more efficient solar cells, and a way to monitor the glucose concentration in the blood of diabetic patients.