Mexican-born American chemist

Mario Molina is an important figure in the development of a scientific understanding of the atmosphere. Molina earned national prominence by theorizing, with fellow chemist F. Sherwood Rowland, that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) deplete the earth's ozone layer. Molina and Sherwood shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry, along with the Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen, for their work on the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere. In his years as a researcher at the Jet Propulsion Lab at the California Institute for Technology (CalTech) and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Molina has continued his investigations into the effects of chemicals on the atmosphere.

Mario José Molina was born in Mexico City to Roberto Molina-Pasquel and Leonor Henriquez. Following his early schooling in Mexico, he graduated from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in 1965 with a degree in chemical...