Ralph J. Cicerone

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Ralph J. Cicerone

Ralph John Cicerone (born May 2, 1943 in New Castle , Pennsylvania , † November 5, 2016 ) was an American climatologist who studied the chemistry of the atmosphere and climate change. He was President of the National Academy of Sciences and Chairman of the National Research Council from 2005 to 2016 .

Life

Cicerone studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( bachelor's degree 1965) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a master's degree as electrical engineer and physicist in 1967 and a doctorate in 1970. He then worked until 1978 at the Space Physics Research Lab of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor , where he was also an assistant professor. From 1978 he worked in the Oceanography Department at the University of California, San Diego and in 1980/81 as a research chemist at the Scripps Research Institute . From 1980 to 1989 he was Senior Scientist and Director of Atmospheric Chemistry at the National Center for Atmospherical Research in Boulder . In 1989 he became a professor in the geosciences department at the University of California, Irvine , which he chaired. In 1994 he became Dean of the Faculty of Physical Sciences and from 1998 to 2005 Chancellor of UC Irvine.

Research on the ozone hole

In 1973 he and Richard S. Stolarski were commissioned by NASA to investigate the possible harmfulness of chlorine, which enters the stratosphere as HCl via the exhaust gases of the planned space shuttle . In doing so, they discovered the effectiveness of chlorine radicals as catalysts in the depletion of the ozone layer. Michael McElroy and Steven Wofsy researched this independently at Harvard, also in connection with the space shuttle. When their results were presented at the IAGA conference in Kyoto in 1973, however, their contributions were criticized because they preferred to conceal the space shuttle as a source and instead used volcanic eruptions, which, however, played a subordinate role as a source of chlorine. In 1974 articles appeared by Mario J. Molina and Sherwood Rowland (Nature) as well as by Stolarski, Walters and Cicerone (Science), which highlighted fluorocarbons as a source and the topic was also picked up by the press, for example by the 1974 New York Times . Molina and Rowland, who began research in 1973, initiated by James Lovelock , and Paul J. Crutzen received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Awards and memberships

In 1979 he was awarded the James B. Macelwane Medal and in 1999 the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science . In 2002 he received the Roger Revelle Medal from the American Geophysical Union . In 2004 he received the Albert Einstein World Award of Science .

He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , the National Academy of Sciences, the American Chemical Society , the American Meteorological Society , the American Geophysical Union (and its President from 1992 to 1994), the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

From 1977 to 1979 he was co-editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research.

literature

Web links

Commons : Ralph J. Cicerone  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ^ National Academy of Sciences President Emeritus Ralph J. Cicerone Dies at 73 . Press release from the National Academy of Sciences on spaceref.com, November 5, 2016, accessed November 8, 2016.
  3. ↑ a b Ralph J. Cicerone. President's Page of the National Academy of Sciences , 2014, archived from the original January 16, 2013 ; accessed on November 8, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Cicerone, Stolarski: Stratosphenc Chlorine: A Possible Sink for Ozone . In: Canadian Journal of Chemistry . 52 (8), 1974, p. 1610, doi : 10.1139 / v74-233 .
  5. ↑ Steven C. Wofsy, Michael B. McElroy: HO x , NO x , and CIO x : Their Role in Atmospheric Photochemistry . In: Canadian Journal of Chemistry . 52 (8), 1974, p. 1582, doi : 10.1139 / v74-230 .
  6. ↑ Michael Kowalok: Stratospheric Ozone Depletion . Environment , 35 (6) (July / August 1993): pp. 12-20, 35-38.
  7. ↑ Nature, Volume 249, June 28, 1974, p. 810.
  8. ^ RJ Cicerone, RS Stolarski, S. Walters: Stratospheric Ozone Destruction by Man-Made Chlorofluoromethanes . Science, Vol. 185, 1974 (Sept. 27), p. 1165.
personal data
SURNAME Cicerone, Ralph J.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cicerone, Ralph John (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American climatologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 2, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH New Castle , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH 5th November 2016