Google Doodle Celebrates Mexican Nobel Laureate Dr Mario Molina

New Delhi: Google Doodle on Sunday celebrates the 80th birthday of Dr Mario Molina, a Mexican chemist who successfully convinced governments to come together to save the planet’s ozone layer. A co-recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Dr Molina was one of the researchers who exposed how chemicals deplete Earth’s ozone shield, which is vital to protecting humans, plants, and wildlife from harmful ultraviolet light.

Mario Molina, born in Mexico City of Mexico on March 19, 1943 co-won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for his role in discovering the threat to the Earth’s ozone layer from chlorofluorocarbon gases or CFCs.

“A co-recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Dr. Molina was one of the researchers who exposed how chemicals deplete Earth’s ozone shield, which is vital to protecting humans, plants, and wildlife from harmful ultraviolet light,” stated Google.

As a child, Malino was so passionate about science that he turned his bathroom into a makeshift laboratory. He got his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and an advanced degree from the University of Freiburg in Germany.

After completing his studies, Mario moved to the United States to conduct postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley, and later at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

It was in the early 1970s when Molina began his research on the impact of synthetic chemicals on Earth’s atmosphere that paved the for his discovery of the harmful impact of chlorofluorocarbons (a chemical found in air conditioners, aerosol sprays, and more) that causes the breakdown of the planet’s protective layer, ozone due to which harmful ultraviolet radiations are able to penetrate Earth’s atmosphere. Dr Molina and his co-researchers published their findings in the Nature journal, which later won them the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995.