MEXICO: Today, on March 19, 2023, Google commemorated the 80th birth anniversary of Dr. Mario Molina, a celebrated Mexican chemist, with a colourful Google Doodle.
Dr. Molina, who was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995, is best known for his pioneering work that led to the protection of the planet’s ozone layer.
Dr. Molina was born in Mexico City in 1943 and was passionate about science from a young age. According to Google’s doodle, he even turned his bathroom into a makeshift laboratory and enjoyed observing microorganisms through a toy microscope.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and a PhD from the University of Freiburg in Germany, Dr. Molina moved to the United States for postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In the early 1970s, Dr. Molina conducted research on how synthetic chemicals affected Earth’s atmosphere. His discovery that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were damaging the ozone layer and causing harmful ultraviolet radiation to reach the Earth’s surface was groundbreaking.
He and his colleagues wrote about their findings in the scientific journal Nature. Their work was the basis for the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement that stopped the production of almost 100 chemicals that hurt the ozone layer.
Dr. Molina received numerous awards for his contributions to science and the environment, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013, the highest civilian honour in the United States.
He died of a heart attack on October 7, 2020, when he was 77 years old. However, his work lives on through the Mario Molina Centre, a leading research institute in Mexico that works to make the world more sustainable.
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