Mario J. Molina - His Discovery

His Discovery

Molina finished his Ph. D in 1972 and married fellow chemist Luisa Y. Tan in July 1973. In the fall of 1973, they moved to Irvine, California, where Molina joined the lab of Professor F. Sherwood Rowland as a postdoctoral fellow. Here, Molina continued Rowland's pioneering research into "hot atom" chemistry, which is the study of chemical properties of atoms with excess translational energy owing to radioactive processes. This study soon led to research into chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which had been accumulating in the atmosphere. Rowland and Molina had investigated other compounds similar to CFCs before, and together they developed the CFC ozone depletion theory. Molina tried to figure out how CFCs might be destroyed in the lower atmosphere, but nothing seemed to work. He and Rowland knew that if CFCs released into the atmosphere do not decay by other processes, they continually rise to higher altitudes until they are destroyed by solar radiation. They discovered that chlorine atoms, produced by the decomposition of CFCs, catalytically destroy ozone. Rowland and Molina published their findings in Nature on June 28, 1974, and also made an effort to announce their findings outside of the scientific community, informing policy makers and the news media of their work. Attesting to the continuing importance of their discovery, to this day there are still laws that protect the ozone layer by regulating the use of CFCs.