Vanderbilt Register.... Feb 3-9, 1997
Nobel Prize Laureate to visit Vanderbilt Feb. 10
The Department of Chemistry will sponsor a seminar by chemist F. Sherwood
Rowland on ozone depletion and global warming.
by Staci I. Shipp
Nobel Prize-winning chemist F. Sherwood Rowland, one of the first scientists
to warn that chlorofluorocarbon gases (CFCs) deplete the ozone layer, will
present a seminar titled "Two Atmospheric Problems: Ozone Depletion
and Global Warming" sponsored by the Vanderbilt University Department
of Chemistry at 4:10 p.m. Feb. 10 in Room 103 of Wilson Hall. A reception
will be held in his honor immediately following in the lobby of Wilson Hall.
The seminar is free and open to the public.
Rowland, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine,
is a specialist in atmospheric chemistry and radiochemistry. He, along with
Mario Molina of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Paul Crutzen
of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, was awarded
the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry by the Royal Swedish Academy of Scientists
for research in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation
and decomposition of ozone. Rowland and Molina, who worked at UCI with Rowland
during 1973 to 1975, researched the impact of CFCs on the ozone layer while
Crutzen dealt primarily with stratospheric effects of Nitrogen oxides.
As a result of research on CFCs and stratospheric ozone, legislative efforts
were enacted during the 1970s in the United States, Canada and Scandinavia
to regulate the manufacture and use of CFCs. In 1985, the discovery of the
ozone hole above Antarctica confirmed the severe effect of the CFCs on ozone.
This also led to the Montreal Protocol of the United Nations Environment
Program in 1987, the first international agreement to regulate emissions
in order to limit the environmental damage already inflicted on the atmosphere.
The terms of the agreement were strengthened in 1992 to attain a complete
phaseout of further CFC production by 1996.
Rowland's most recent research has centered around the effects of hydrocarbon
gases on the atmosphere. With the assistance of his colleagues at UCI, Rowland
determined that common liquid propane gas, the cooking and heating fuel
contained in and leaking from propane tanks in millions of households around
the world, can be a major factor contributing to urban smog.
His research has also demonstrated that the concentration of methane gas
has more than doubled in the past two centuries. Methane absorbs terrestrial
infrared radiation, and increases in its concentration exacerbate the "greenhouse
effect," the gradual warming of the earth's surface.
Rowland's current projects focus on investigating hydrocarbon and halocarbon
composition of the atmosphere from aircraft in remote locations and on the
surface in heavily polluted cities.
Rowland, 69, earned a B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1948 and a M.S.
and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1951 and 1952, respectively.
He has served on the faculties of Princeton University and the University
of Kansas. In 1964, Rowland became a professor and the first chairman of
the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. He
has since been named the University of California's Daniel G. Aldrich Jr.
Professor of Chemistry and the Donald Bren Research Professor of Chemistry.
Rowland is the recipient of numerous awards including the Tyler World Prize
in Ecology and Energy and the Award for Creative Advances in Environmental
Science and Technology of the American Chemical Society, which he received
with Molina; the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievements in Health;
the Japan Prize in Environmental Science and Technology and the Albert Einstein
Prize of the World Cultural Council. He has also been named by the United
Nations to the Global 500 Role of Honour for Environmental Achievement.
Rowland is the elected foreign secretary of the U.S. National Academy of
Sciences and has served on numerous other national and international executive
committees.
Presented by the graduate student body of the Vanderbilt University Department
of Chemistry, this seminar is part of a newly established student-led series
titled "The Mitchum E. Warren Jr. Graduate Lectureship," named
in honor of Vanderbilt alumnus Mitchum E. Warren Jr., who received a B.A.
and Ph.D. from the University. He served as assistant professor in Peabody
College from 1966 to 1980.
The seminar series, which is free and open to the public, is based on general
areas of research including biomedical/biochemistry, materials science and
environmental chemistry. For more information, call Pat John, Chemistry
Department graduate coordinator, at 343-4371.
This document created Feb. 6, 1997