CHEMIST DONATES NOBEL WINNINGS
PART OF PRIZE TO FUND ECOLOGY WORK AT MIT
Author: By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff
Date: Thursday, February 15, 1996
Page: 46
Section: METRO
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who shared last year's
Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on ozone destruction has donated
$200,000 of his Nobel winnings to help scholars from developing nations
conduct environmental research at MIT.
Mario J. Molina, a native of Mexico, said he hopes his donation will
attract others that would help support ongoing research by at least one
visiting scientist, particularly graduate students and postdoctoral
researchers from Latin America.
"It's clear to me that one of the important needs for global environmental
issues is the participation of scientists from all over the world," Molina
said yesterday.
"We have some very big challenges ahead if we are to preserve the
environment, and it's obvious that there are too few scientists from
developing countries involved in the effort," he said.
MIT professor Thomas H. Jordan, head of the institute's Department of
Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, said, "This is an incredibly
generous gift on the Molinas' part for what has to be considered one of
society's truly great causes."
Jordan said he hopes the Molina donation and others can help train more
researchers to work on mounting environmental problems in Third World and
developing countries.
Molina shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry last year for work he started
in the 1970s showing that chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, were destroying the
ozone layer that protects life on Earth from the sun's ultraviolet rays.
Work by Molina and his fellow prize winners -- F. Sherwood Rowland of the
University of California at Irvine and Paul Crutzen of the Max Planck
Institute for Chemistry in Germany -- helped lead to a 1987 worldwide
agreement banning use of CFCs, which were once commonly used in aerosol cans.
Molina's one-third share of the prize came to about $330,000.
Molina, whose wife, Luisa Molina, is also a researcher at MIT, said Mexican
officials expressed interest in getting donations from corporate leaders and
providing government aid to augment his $200,000.
"This is one modest way to stimulate young people from developing countries
to get interested in environmental issues," Molina said.
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