Molina, Mario
Mario Molina, 1943–, 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 2005 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.