The day: ozone hole co-discoverer and Nobel Prize winner Molina is dead

Mario Molina.

(Photo: REUTERS)

This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded just yesterday. Today it becomes known that the Nobel Laureate Mario Molina died at the age of 77. According to media reports, he died yesterday of a heart attack. The Mexican was a co-discoverer of the Ozone hole became known and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1995 together with the Dutchman Paul Crutzen. Molina was one of the pioneers in the field of atmospheric chemistry and had already 1974 with his colleague Frank Sherwood warned in a scientific article about a "hole" in the ozone layer because of certain industrial gases. With his research, Molina contributed to the Montreal Protocol for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, in which the international community pledged to renounce the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the late 1980s.