Mexican chemist Mario Molinawhich helped discover that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) can deplete the Earth’s ozone layer, as well as discover the existence of an ozone hole in Antarctica, Google is dedicating today’s (Sunday, March 19, 2023) doodle on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of his birth.

The award was given to Mario Molina, who died on October 7, 2020. Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for his role in drawing attention to the threat to the Earth’s ozone layer from CFCs. He was the first Mexican-born scientist to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Good news: the ozone layer is on its way to full recovery ❤️‍🩹

Mario Molina was one of the first scientists to discover that synthetic chemicals destroy ozone. Learn about this Mexican explorer who literally helped save the world → https://t.co/76l5VJhCeB #GoogleDoodle pic.twitter.com/wUlgIPTzmj

— Google Doodles (@GoogleDoodles) March 19, 2023

Mario Molina was born in Mexico City. His father was the eminent jurist Roberto Molina-Pasquel (1908–1977), who served intermittently as the Mexican ambassador to Ethiopia, Australia and the Philippines, and his mother was Leonor Henriquez. As a child, Mario turned the bathroom in the house into his own little laboratory, where he used children’s chemistry kits and microscopes. He was modeled after his aunt, Esther Molina, who was a chemist and assisted him in his experiments.

After leaving school in 1965, he graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) with a degree in chemical engineering. In 1967 he received a master’s degree in polymerization kinetics from the University of Freiburg, then West Germany, and finally a doctorate in physical chemistry in 1972 from the University of California at Berkeley with Professor George Pimendel.

Between 1974 and 2004, Molina held research and teaching positions at the University of California, Irvine, the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he simultaneously held positions in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the Department of Chemistry. He completed his primary career in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California at San Diego and at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Center for Atmospheric Sciences.

Molina was appointed in 2008 by U.S. President Barack Obama to lead the Environmental Protection Task Force and a member of the President’s Council on Science and Technology.

^{According to information from WIKIPEDIA}