AP
AP
F. Sherwood Rowland. File photo
F. Sherwood Rowland, the Nobel prize-winning chemist
who sounded the alarm on the thinning of the Earth’s ozone layer, has
died. He was 84.
Rowland died Saturday at his home
of complications from Parkinson’s disease, the dean of the University of
California, Irvine’s physical sciences department said Sunday.
“We
have lost our finest friend and mentor,” Kenneth C. Janda said in a
statement. “He saved the world from a major catastrophe - never wavering
in his commitment to science, truth and humanity and did so with
integrity and grace.”
Rowland was among three
scientists awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize for chemistry for explaining how
the ozone layer is formed and decomposed through chemical processes in
the atmosphere.
The prize was awarded more than two
decades after Rowland and post-doctoral student Mario Molina calculated
that if human use of chlorofluorocarbons, a by-product of aerosol
sprays, deodorants and other household products, were to continue at an
unchanged rate, the ozone layer would be depleted after several decades.
Their work built upon findings by atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen.
Their
prediction caught enormous attention and was strongly challenged partly
because the non-toxic properties of CFCs were thought to be
environmentally safe. Their work gained widespread recognition more than
a decade later with the discovery of the ozone hole over the Earth’s
polar regions.
“It was to turn out that they had
even underestimated the risk,” a Nobel committee said in its award
citation for Rowland, Molina and Crutzen.
Mr. Molina said his former mentor never shied from defending his work or advocating a ban on CFCs.
“He
showed me that if we believe in the science ... we should speak out
when we feel it’s important for society to change,” Mr. Molina told The
Associated Press.
“Isn’t it a responsibility of
scientists, if you believe that you have found something that can affect
the environment, isn’t it your responsibility to do something about it,
enough so that action actually takes place?” Rowland said at a White
House climate change roundtable in 1997.
“If not us, who? If not now, when?” he asked.
Rowland was survived by his wife of nearly 60 years, Joan, a son and a daughter.
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