Science

Paul Crutzen, Nobel Laureate Who Fought Climate Change, Dies at 87


Paul J. Crutzen, a Dutch scientist who earned a Nobel Prize for work that warned the world about the threat of chemicals to the planet’s ozone layer and who went on to push for action against global warming, died on Jan. 28 in Mainz, Germany. He was 87.

The Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz announced the death, in a hospital, but did not state the cause. Susanne Benner, a spokeswoman for the institute, said Dr. Crutzen had been treated for Parkinson’s disease.

Martin Stratmann, the president of the Max Planck Society, said in a statement that Dr. Crutzen’s work had led to the ban on ozone-depleting chemicals, “a hitherto unique example of how Nobel Prize-winning basic research can directly lead to a global political decision.”

“A few years later I was able to entice her to marry me,” he wrote. “What a great choice I made!”

His wife survives him, as do their two daughters, Sylvia and Ilona Crutzen, and three grandchildren.

In 1958, Dr. Crutzen saw an advertisement in a Swedish newspaper for a job programming computers in the department of meteorology at what is now Stockholm University. “Although I had not the slightest experience in this subject,” he wrote, “I applied for the job and had the great luck to be chosen from among many candidates.”

At the meteorology institute, he began studies that would lead to his receiving, in 1963, the equivalent of a master of science degree that combined mathematics, statistics and meteorology. That was followed by a Ph.D. in meteorology in 1968 and a doctorate of philosophy, the most advanced degree in the Swedish system, in 1973.

In choosing a specific topic of research, he said, “I picked stratospheric ozone as my subject, without the slightest anticipation of what lay ahead.”

He later served as director of research at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., from 1977 to 1980, and at the Max Planck Institute from 1980 until 2000.



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