Molina, Mario (Mario José Molina-Pasquel y Henríquez), 1943–2020, Mexican chemist, Ph.D. Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1972. Molina was a professor at the Univ. of California, Irvine from 1975 to 1982 and a researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., from 1982 to 1989, when he then joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004 he founded the Mario Molina Center for Strategic Studies on Energy and the Environment in Mexico City, dedicated to finding practical solutions to the challenges that result from the need to prevent climate change, and the following year Molina became a professor at the Univ. of California, San Diego. He shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Paul Crutzen and Sherwood Rowland for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone. Molina and Rowland are credited with identifying the threat to the ozone layer from chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases, which were used as propellants in aerosol cans and as coolants in refrigerators. Published in Nature in 1974, their findings led to a ban on the use of CFCs. Molina's later work focused on solutions to air quality deterioration in urban areas, science-policy issues related to the climate change, and sustainable development that would permit economic growth.
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