UCI's Rowland elected to UK's Royal Society

May 20, 2004

By Gary Robbins

University of California, Irvine, chemist and Nobel laureate F. Sherwood Rowland was today elected to the Royal Society of the United Kingdom, the world's oldest continuously operating scientific academy.

Rowland, 76, was elected as a foreign member of the 344 year-old society for "his part in predicting that the continued use of chlorofluromethanes as refrigerants and in aerosols would result in the serious long-term depletion of ozone in the stratosphere, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1995," the academy said in a statement.

"The Royal Society has almost 350 years of history involving most of the greatest scientists of all time and I feel deeply honored to be elected to this distinction," Rowland said in a statement from London. "My wife, Joan, and I are looking forward to attending the admission celebration in London in mid-July."

The society's past members include such eminent scholars as Issac Newton. Current members include Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, and physicist Steven Hawking.