Nobel winner speaks Feb. 8

F. Sherwood Rowland, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work that revealed the depletion of the Earth’s ozone layer, will discuss stratospheric ozone and global smog during a lecture at 3:30 p.m. Thursday in 131 Bagley.

Rowland is a professor of chemistry and Earth science systems at the University of California, Irvine, and also serves as foreign secretary of the National Academy of Sciences.

Rowland and two colleagues won the Nobel honor for describing for the first time the mechanisms of chemical reactions in the depletion of the Earth’s ozone layer. In 1975, he published an influential paper describing how chlorofluorocarbons - at the time commonly used as cooling agents in refrigerators and air conditioners - deplete the stratospheric ozone layer. Hundreds of researchers have since built on his basic work.

The lecture is part of a colloquium series run by chemistry graduate students, and is open to general campus attendance.