Smog-ology: Caltech professor wins environmental prize

The Los Angeles basin is home to some famously filthy air, and this month a leader in the study of air pollution added a carbon particle-tainted feather to his cap.

John Seinfeld, a chemical engineering professor at Caltech, has been named one of two winners of this year’s Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.

The prize goes to researchers who advance understanding of environmental health and science. It comes with a $200,000 award, which Seinfeld will split with Kirk Smith, a University of California at Berkeley professor of global environmental science. Both are scheduled to give a public lecture at USC, which administers the award, at 2 p.m. on April 26.

Between a dozen and three dozen scientists are nominated for the award each year, according to Tyler Prize Administrator Amber Brown. A panel of nine researchers from Harvard University, Baylor University, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod and other schools serve as the award’s executive committee.

Seinfeld arrived at Caltech in the hazy days of 1967, when even Pasadenans sometimes could not see the San Gabriel Mountains looming over them.

“That’s what got me interested in this whole area to begin with, the extent of air pollution in Los Angeles,” Seinfeld said. “I grew up in a small town in New York and never thought about the air.”

Air quality in L.A. is far better today than it was when he arrived, Seinfeld said, with cleaner cars one of the main causes.

“One of the great engineering achievements of the last century was [the invention of] the catalytic converter,” he said.

Seinfeld leads a group of about 15 scientists studying everything from the detailed chemical makeup of particles as they mix with the clouds to the flow of air pollution as it drifts around the globe.

The field has advanced significantly with the use of weather satellites, he said.

“With the advent of the satellites it is now possible to view the air over the entire earth,” Seinfeld said. “What we’ve learned is that one hemisphere is like one big backyard. Pollution emitted from Asia flows across the Pacific and crosses the West Coast of the United States.”

With air currents pushing east, he said, “Our emissions go out over the Atlantic toward Europe.”

After decades of study, Seinfeld sees little room for debate in the much-debated question about human influence on climate.

“ I know that if one reads the popular press there is a tendency to give weight to those who claim that climate change either isn’t happening or, if it is, that humans are not responsible,” he said. “But the fact that the earth is getting warmer and that humans are responsible is unequivocal.

“I’m not an economist or a politician. I don’t make statements about what we need to do politically about climate change,” he said. “The politicians may decide there is nothing we can do or nothing we can afford to do. But to claim it is not happening is sheer folly.”

Owen Lind, a professor at Baylor Univeristy and the chair of the Tyler Prize committee, stated in an email that Seinfeld is “the preeminent scientist working on the causes and consequences of atmospheric aerosols. Atmospheric aerosols effects are broad, from human health to global change. Seinfeld’s work, as published in the two most prestigious journals, Science and Nature, sets him apart as the leader.”

Seinfeld said he is grateful to receive the Tyler Prize. The inaugural award, in 1974, went to Caltech researcher Arie Haagen-Smit. Later another Caltech researcher, Clair Patterson, was the recipient.

Seinfeld credited his students, past and present ,for the honor. He said he’s advised roughly 80 PhD students over the years and most have gone on to become professors.

“It is the brilliance and the efforts of these students that really makes a program like this have such an impact,” he said.