Mario J. Molina
Mario José Molina was a Mexican-born American chemist who was jointly awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with chemists F. Sherwood Rowland and Paul Crutzen for their research on chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, and how CFCs floated into the upper stratosphere, where solar ultraviolet radiation broke them apart and set off an ozone-destroying chemical reaction. Their discovery helped lead the international movement in the late 20th century to limit the widespread use of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases. Mario Molina was born in Mexico City and in his early childhood he wanted to be a chemist. As a child, he admired his aunt who was also a chemist and emulated her by converting a spare bathroom into a makeshift chemistry lab. Molina studied chemical engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City and received an advanced degree from the University of Freiburg (1967) in West Germany. He continued his education in the US at the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D., 1972), where he worked for a year before joining Rowland at the University of California, Irvine. Molina and Rowland performed experiments on pollutants in the atmosphere, where they eventually discovered that CFC gases rise to the stratosphere, where UV light breaks them apart and decomposed the ozone layer that protects the Earth from solar radiation. He later became a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.
-Jamilett
