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Atmospheric chemist who linked human activity to ozone depletion.
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were a triumph of the chemical industry and a mere curiosity in atmospheric science when Sherwood (Sherry) Rowland, with his postdoc Mario Molina, recognized in 1973 that these seemingly inert gases posed a threat to Earth's ozone layer. Returning home one evening, Rowland remarked to his wife Joan that the research "is going very well, but it may mean the end of the world".
In their laboratory at the University of California, Irvine, Molina and Rowland had discovered that CFC-11 (CFCl3) and CFC-12 (CF2Cl2), then widely used as refrigerants and aerosol propellants, readily absorbed ultraviolet light and broke down to release reactive chlorine. This work was the first step in tracing the causal chain linking industrial production of CFCs with global ozone depletion - and won Rowland and Molina the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, shared with Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen.
Surrounded by his family at his home in Corona del Mar, California, Rowland died on 10 March, aged 84, from complications of Parkinson's disease. He was born in Delaware, Ohio; his mother was a Latin teacher and his father taught mathematics at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, where Rowland attended college after graduating from high school at 15. When he was old enough, he enlisted in the US Navy. As a lanky athlete, he readily found a home in sports teams in the Navy and later in graduate school at the University of Chicago, Illinois, where he...