Sherry offered me a list of research options: the one project that intrigued me the most consisted of finding out the environmental fate of certain very inert industrial chemicals – the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) – which had been accumulating in the atmosphere and which at that time were thought to have no significant effects on the environment. This project offered me the opportunity to learn a new field – atmospheric chemistry – about which I knew very little; trying to solve a challenging problem appeared to be an excellent way to plunge into a new research area.
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Mario Molina
Atmospheric chemist; Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1995
Mexico · 1943–2020
Science and medicine
About
Atmospheric chemist who, with F. Sherwood Rowland, showed in 1974 that chlorofluorocarbons deplete stratospheric ozone. Shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Rowland and Paul Crutzen, becoming the first Mexican-born scientist to receive a Nobel in a scientific category. He later worked on urban air quality in Mexico City.
19 answers
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