Frank Sherwood Rowland ( Delaware , June 28 , 1927 – California March 10 , 2012 ). American scientist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for his discoveries about the deterioration of the ozone layer .
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 2 Main contributions
- 3 Acknowledgments
- 4 Sources
Biographical synthesis
He completed his primary and secondary studies in the public schools of his hometown, and since then he was encouraged by his teachers to dedicate himself to the study of science. He graduated from its High School in 1943 and, unlike his other classmates, did not take part in the war, preferring to join the University.
Rowland received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Ohio Wesleyan University ( 1948 ), earned his MS in 1951, and received his doctorate from the University of Chicago ( 1952 ).
In the Department of Chemistry of said University, he had as a mentor Willard F. Libby – who had received the Nobel in 1960 for the development of the carbon-14 procedure – who introduced Sherwood to his team, dedicated to the study of chemistry. radioactive, and gave him notions to become a competent scientist. He had the opportunity to study with very important scientists, such as Harold Clayton Urey , Maria Goeppert Mayer and Enrico Fermi , who had received or were going to receive the Nobel.
During his university years he married Joan Lundberg, in 1952 , who was studying at the same university, with whom he had two children. His doctoral thesis dealt with the chemical state of the cyclotron produced in bromine atoms .
He held academic positions at the University of Princeton ( 1952 – 1956 ) and that of Kansas ( 1956 – 1964 ) before becoming a professor of chemistry at the University of California at Irvine ( 1964 ).
There he began working with Mario Molina in the early 1970s. Rowland was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1978 and chaired the American Association for the Advancement of Science ( AAAS ) in 1993 .
He passes away at the age of 84, he is remembered as an open and very direct person; with his tall stature and strong complexion, conversing with students and colleagues about scientific issues at the UCI.
Main contributions
He was working for the Brookhaven National Laboratory ; He experimented with a mixture of sugar and carbonaceous lithium within the flow of neutrons of the nuclear reactor of Brookhaven in what was the first step toward the synthesis of glucose radioactive tritium, of which became echo an article published in the journal Science .
He also experimented in a new subfield of tritium atomic chemistry . These works were of great interest to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which became interested in these paths of chemistry , and decided to subsidize them.
As a professor at the University of Kansas , he obtained special facilities to work in radiochemistry . There he formed his own research group, which was joined by numerous students from around the world, including Europe and Japan . For the next eight years, this team’s research on the reactions of tritium atoms was truly productive.
His best known work was to discover that chlorofluorocarbons contribute to the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere . As an expert in Chemical and Photochemical Kinetics , after studying the chemical reactions of radioactive tracers ( tritium , carbon-14 , and isotopes of fluorine and chlorine ), in 1974 he became interested, together with Mario Molina , in the effect of increasing accumulation, such as product of human activity, of CFCs, non-toxic compounds, very little soluble in water and very stable in the troposphere, with a life time of about 100 years.
Rowland and Molina showed that they can only be destroyed by solar photolysis in the stratosphere , initiating a cycle that leads to the destruction of the ozone layer , which protects us from ultraviolet radiation and makes life possible. A global vision is needed to follow, in Rowland’s phrase, “the evolution of CFCs from the cradle, on the earth’s surface, to their grave in the stratosphere .”
Rowland said gases artificial organic compounds are combined with solar radiation and decompose in the stratosphere releasing atoms of chlorine and molecules of chlorine monoxide that are individually capable of decomposing large number of molecules of ozone .
Rowland’s research, first published in the journal Nature in 1974 , began a large-scale scientific exploration of the problem and the adoption of international measures for its resolution. The National Academy of Sciences recognized the validity of its findings in 1976, and in 1978 chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) aerosols were banned in the United States .
The predictions of Rowland and his collaborator were confirmed by the discovery, in 1985 , of the seasonal appearance, during the austral spring, of an ozone hole over Antarctica . These events led humanity to become aware of the unity and limits of our common home: the Montreal ( 1987 ) and Copenhagen ( 1992 ) protocols established , respectively, the reduction and definitive suspension of the manufacture of CFCs.
Recognitions
He was awarded the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 1983 , Japan Prize in 1989 considered a prelude to the Nobel because it is awarded to people whose original and outstanding achievements in science and technology are recognized for having advanced the frontiers of knowledge and served to the cause of peace and prosperity for mankind, World Science Prize winner, Albert Einstein in 1994 .
He received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1995 along with Mario Molina of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , and Paul Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz , Germany . The same year the Physical Sciences building at the University of California at Irvine where he had his long labs was renamed Rowland in his honor.
