His family informed about his death in Mexico City, they did not state the cause of his death. Molin’s work and research were key to the creation and approval of the Montreal Protocol of 1987. This document has limited the use of ozone-depleting gases worldwide.
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According to the professional journal Science, this makes Molina one of the most influential climatologists in the past half century. His work has helped save a huge number of lives.
“He was one of the most important people to help protect the climate in history,” Paul Bledsoe, a former White House climate adviser who advised President Bill Clinton and has worked with Molina repeatedly, told Greenwire.
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A groundbreaking study
Experts often complain that one job, even the best, can’t change anything. But Molin’s 1974 study shows the opposite. Together with the American scientist Frank Sherwood Rowland, he described how some chemicals, especially the so-called chlorofluorocarbons used in many common products, destroy the ozone layer, which protects life on Earth from dangerous ultraviolet radiation.
The study was rejected by the chemical industry at the time, but its results quickly spread to the public, who were terrified of the possible effects. And direct pressure on politicians led to the signing of the Montreal Protocol, which banned the worst substances.
Mollina was directly involved in the report that was the basis of the contract, as well as in the text of the contract itself. To this day, it is one of the greatest achievements of the international community in the field of global problems threatening humanity.
In 1995, Molina, Rowland and Paul Crutzen of the Netherlands received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “their work in the field of atmospheric chemistry, especially in the field of ozone formation and decomposition.” Molina is so far the only Mexican scientist to receive this prestigious award.
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