UCI’s Rowland Wins Top Prize for Ozone Study
UC Irvine chemistry Prof. F. Sherwood Rowland has been awarded the internationally prestigious Japan Prize by the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan for his documentation of the destruction of the Earth’s ozone layer.
The 50-million-yen award in environmental sciences and technology goes to Rowland for his theoretical analysis of the depletion of Earth’s protective ozone layer and his prediction of the rate of depletion. At current exchange rates, the prize is worth about $387,600.
Rowland, 62, discovered in 1974 that substances used in common aerosol sprays, air-conditioning systems and cleaning solvents were responsible for damaging the ozone layer, which he predicted would cause increased skin cancer rates and catastrophic climactic change. His work to publicize the findings resulted in a 1978 congressional ban on the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in aerosol sprays.
The foundation also awarded a prize in the field of medical sciences to E.J. Corey, the Sheldon Emery professor of chemistry at Harvard University. Corey was honored for 40 years of research in the field of organic chemistry, his work in the synthesis of Eicosanoidis and publication of 660 papers. Corey also receives a prize of 50 million yen.
The award recipients were named today at a 2 p.m. news conference in Tokyo (9 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on Tuesday). The Japan Prize, awarded in two categories each year, rewards scientific and technological achievements that contribute to world peace. The prize was established in 1983 by the Japanese appliance manufacturer Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and endorsed by the Japanese government the same year.
Rowland and Corey, who were selected from among 407 nominees, will receive their awards at a presentation April 12.
Harold Moore, dean of physical sciences at UCI, said that Rowland’s selection represents “a recognition by the scientific community that he was right.”
“There are three prizes that are the pinnacles of honor in science: the Nobel Prize, the Japan Prize and the Welch Award (presented annually by the Welch Foundation in Texas). Sherry (Sherwood) deserves all three. This is probably the most prestigious award that anyone at UCI has ever received.”
“It is very gratifying,” Rowland said Tuesday night from his home in Corona del Mar. “It simply means that there is international recognition of the efforts.”
Rowland, the Daniel G. Aldrich professor of chemistry at UC Irvine, said he has no immediate plans for the cash prize, which is given with no strings attached.
“It means that we can look forward to the end of the month with equanimity instead of concern,” he said, referring to himself and wife, Joanne. “It will probably benefit our younger relatives.”
The recognition was especially sweet for Rowland, who suffered years of attacks by manufacturers of CFCs and disparagement at congressional hearings and academic meetings where he was labled a publicity seeker and “some kind of nut” in connection with his work on the ozone layer. In a pioneering research with post-doctoral researcher Mario Molina, Rowland wrote that the CFCs splinter when exposed to ultraviolet light at high altitudes, setting off chain reactions responsible for rapid destruction of the ozone.
Rowland’s research was corroborated in a March, 1988, study by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which showed that CFCs were destroying the ozone more rapidly than previously believed. The ozone layer is a protective band of gas that blocks much of the sun’s ultraviolet rays, protecting animals and plants.
The Science and Technology award is the latest of many honors bestowed on Rowland. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has won the Tyler Prize in Ecology and Energy, the Leo Szilard Award for Physics in the Public Interest, the Gordon Y. Billard Award for Research and a distinguished research award from the UC system’s Academic Senate and Academic Council.
