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Mario Molina, a co-winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, died this week. Originally published by E&E News Mario Molina, a chemist whose work on the ozone layer earned him a Nobel Prize in 1995, died yesterday in Mexico City. He was 77. Molina’s family announced his death in a brief statement through the institute that carried his name. It did not give a cause of death. Molina’s work was crucial to enacting the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer in 1987, and it made him one of the most consequential scientists of the past 50 years. “He’s one of the single most important contributors to climate protection in world history,” said Paul Bledsoe, a former climate adviser in the White House under former President Bill Clinton who worked with Molina in various capacities over the years. Molina and American scientist Frank Sherwood Rowland published a paper in 1974 that found chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), chemicals used in a variety of products, were destroying the ozone layer. The groundbreaking study was lambasted by the chemicals industry, but it opened the public’s eyes to the harmful effects of CFCs and led directly to the Montreal Protocol. Molina worked […]
