UCI Nobel laureate thrives after getting pacemaker

The Orange County Register

July 29th, 2009

By Gary Robbins

Atmospheric chemist F. Sherwood Rowland

F. Sherwood Rowland, the UCI chemist who won a Nobel Prize for revealing man-made threats to the ozone layer, has resumed his worldwide speaking schedule and local office work after successfully being fitted with a heart pacemaker.

Rowland, who turned 82 in June, says he received a pacemaker in April to regulate his heart beat.

In recent weeks, Rowland has given climate change talks during trips to Germany and Ireland. And he was in his campus office on Tuesday, fielding calls or a variety of scientific issues. He’s scheduled to travel to Rome in early September to visit his daughter, the internationally known author and art historian Ingrid Rowland.

“I realized that I’m getting older,” said Rowland, who has a dry wit and penchant for understatement. When asked if he thinks about his mortality, Rowland said, “I didn’t think about it when I was 72. I don’t think about it much now, either.”

Rowland is a founding member of the UCI faculty. He shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry with former graduate student Mario Molina, and Paul Crutzen, for identifying the impact of CFCs on the ozone layer.