Mario José Molina Henríquez (March 19, 1943 - October 7, 2020) known as Mario Molina, was a Mexican chemist. He played an important role in discovering the hole in the Antarctic ozone layer and was the recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in the discovery of the threat to the Earth's ozone layer from chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases. . He is the first Mexican-born scientist to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the third Mexican-born to win the Nobel Prize. During his career, Molina has held research and teaching positions at the University of California, Irvine, the California Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, San Diego, and the Center for Atmospheric Sciences from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Molina is also the director of the Mario Molina Center for Energy and Environment in Mexico City. Molina is an adviser to the President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, on climate forecasting. On October 7, 2020, the National Autonomous University of Mexico announced that Molina had died of a heart attack. In Mexico City, on March 19, 1943, Mario Molina was born to Roberto Molina Pasquel and Leonor Henríquez. His father is a lawyer and ambassador to Ethiopia, Australia and the Philippines. His mother is the head of the family. With interests very different from those of his parents, Mario Molina went on to make one of the greatest discoveries in environmental science. Mario Molina attended elementary and primary school in Mexico. However, even before he went to high school, Mario Molina developed a deep interest in chemistry. As a child, he converted the bathroom in his house into his own little laboratory, using children's microscopes to play with chemical formulas. Ester Molina, Mario's aunt and an accomplished chemist, nurtured his interest and helped him perform complex chemical experiments. At this time, Mario knew that he wanted to pursue a career in chemistry, and at the age of 11, he was sent to a boarding school in Switzerland at the Institut auf dem Rosenberg in Switzerland, where he learned to speak German. Before this, Mario initially wanted to become a violinist, but his love for chemistry overcame that interest. At first, Mario was disappointed when he arrived at the boarding school in Switzerland because most of his classmates were not as interested in science as he was. Molina's early career was research at various academic institutions. Molina earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 1965. Finally, Molina studied polymerization kinetics at the Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg, West Germany for two years. Finally, he was accepted for graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley. After earning his doctorate, he attended UC Irvine. He returned to Mexico where he started the first chemical engineering program at his school. This is just the beginning of his chemistry efforts. Mario Molina began his studies at the University of California at Berkeley in 1968, where he would receive his doctorate. and physical chemistry. Throughout his years at Berkeley, he was involved in a variety of research projects such as the study of nuclear energy using chemical lasers and the study of energy distribution in the products of chemical and photochemical reactions. Throughout this journey, he worked with his teacher and mentor George C. Pimentel who took his love for chemistry even further. After completing his Ph.D. in physical chemistry, and in 1973, he enrolled in a research program at UC Berkeley, with Sherwood Rowland. A topic of interest is chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The two would eventually make one of the greatest discoveries in atmospheric chemistry. They presented their theory of ozone depletion, which motivated the public to reduce their use of CFCs. This started his career as a famous chemist. Between 1974 and 2004, Molina held various research and teaching positions at the University of California at Irvine, Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he held a joint position in the Department of Earth and Space. . . Science and Chemistry Department. On July 1, 2004, Molina joined the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego and the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In addition, he established a non-profit organization, which opened the Mario Molina Center for Strategic Energy and Environmental Studies (Spanish: Centro Mario Molina para Estudios Estratégicos sobre Energía y Medio Ambiente) in Mexico City in 2005. Molina is his director.
Molina served on the board of the Society for Science, now known as the Society for Science & the Public, from 2000 to 2005. He also served on the board of the John D. at the Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (2004-2014) and as a member of the MacArthur Foundation's Institutional Policy Committee and its committee on Global Security and Cooperation. Molina was elected to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on July 24, 2000. He is the president of the Vatican conference and the author of the book Well Under 2 Degrees Celsius: Urgent Actions to Protect People and Earth from Climate Change the weather is terrible. (2017) with Veerabhadran Ramanathan and Durwood Zaelke. This report provides 12 scalable and practical solutions that are part of a three-point strategy to reduce climate change.
Molina was appointed by US President Barack Obama to establish a reform group on environmental issues in 2008. Under President Obama, he was a member of the President's Advisory Council on Science and Technology.
Molina served on the board of directors of Xyleco. He contributed to the content of the papal encyclical Laudato Si\'.
In 2020, Mario Molina helped research the importance of wearing face masks amid the SARS-COV-2 pandemic. The research paper titled "Identification of airborne transmission as a mode of spread of COVID-19" was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Journal in collaboration with Renyi Zhang, Yixin Li, Annie L. Zhang, and Yuan Wang.Molina died on October 7, 2020, at the age of 77, following a heart attack.
Father: Roberto Molina Pasquel (lawyer-diploma)
Mother: Leonor Henriquez de Molina
Wife: Luisa Tan Molina (chemist, died 1973, div., one child)
They are: Felipe (doctor, b. 1977)
Spouse: Guadalupe Alvarez (d. February 2006)
University: BS in Chemical Engineering, National Autonomous University of Mexico (1965)
University: Chemical Engineering MS, University of Friborg (1967)
Lecturer: Chemical Engineering, National Autonomous University of Mexico (1967-68)
University: PhD in Physical Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley (1972)
Researcher: Chemistry, University of California at Berkeley (1972-73)
Professor: Chemistry, University of California at Irvine (1973-82)
Researcher: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (1982-89)
Professor: Chemistry and Atmospheric Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1989-97)
Instructor: Inst. Professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Earth Sciences, MIT (1997-2004)
Professor: Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, San Diego (2004-)
Professor: Atmospheric Sciences, Scripps Research Institute (2004-)
Tyler Award for Environmental Achievement 1983 (with F. Sherwood Rowland)
ACS Gustavus J. Esselen Prize 1987
1988 AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Award
1989 NASA Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement
1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (with Paul J. Crutzen and F. Sherwood Rowland)
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Chemical Society
National College School
Council of Sponsors of the Federation of American Scientists
medical school
MacArthur Foundation Board of Trustees
National Academy of Sciences
NASA Advisory Committee
National Institute of Health
National Science Foundation
Pew Charitable Trusts Scholars Scholarship, 1990
Pontifical Academy of Sciences
Mexican fathers
U.S. Citizen self-made
homonymous asteroid 9680 Molina
Democratic National Committee
Year 2000
Hillary Rodham Clinton for the US Senate Committee
John Kerry for President
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