F. Sherwood Rowland

Frank Sherwood Rowland
At the inaugural World Science Summit, May 2008
Born	(1927-06-28) June 28, 1927 Delaware, Ohio
Nationality	United States
Alma mater	Ohio Wesleyan University (B.A.), University of Chicago (Ph.D.)
Known for	ozone depletion
Awards	1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Scientific career
Fields	chemistry
Institutions	University of California, Irvine
Doctoral advisor	Willard Libby

Frank Sherwood Rowland (born June 28, 1927) is an American Nobel laureate and a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. His research is in atmospheric chemistry and chemical kinetics.

Born in Delaware, Ohio, Rowland received his B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1948. He then earned his M.S. in 1951 and his Ph.D. in 1952, both from the University of Chicago. He held academic posts at Princeton University (1952–56) and at the University of Kansas (1956–64) before becoming a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine, in 1964. At Irvine in the early 1970s he began working with Mario Molina. Rowland was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1978, and served as a president of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1993.

His best-known work is the discovery that chlorofluorocarbons contribute to ozone depletion. Rowland theorized that manmade organic compound gases combine with solar radiation and decompose in the stratosphere, releasing atoms of chlorine and chlorine monoxide that are individually able to destroy large numbers of ozone molecules. Rowland's research, first published in Nature magazine in 1974, initiated a scientific investigation of the problem. The National Academy of Sciences concurred with their findings in 1976, and in 1978 CFC-based aerosols were banned in the United States.

He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Mario Molina of MIT and Paul Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. The Physical Sciences Building at the University of California, Irvine, which held his laboratories for many years, was renamed Rowland Hall in his honor that same year.

He has won numerous awards for his work:

• Tolman Medal, 1976
• Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, 1983
• Japan Prize, 1989
• Peter Debye Award, 1993
• Roger Revelle Medal, 1994
• Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1995

References

• MJ Molina and FS Rowland "Stratospheric Sink for Chlorofluoromethanes: Chlorine Atom-Catalysed Destruction of Ozone" Nature 249 (28 June 1974):810-2 doi:10.1038/249810a0

External links

• Autobiography
• CFCs, Ozone Depletion and Global Warming Freeview video interview with F.Sherwood Rowland provided by the Vega Science Trust.