Chemist Mario Molina, Mexican Nobel Prize winner, dies

The Mexican chemist Mario Molina died this Wednesday at the age of 77.

The news of the death of the 1995 Nobel Prize has been confirmed by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Molina's voice was one of the most important in the Latin American scientific community that raised its voice against climate change.

The chemist served on the US Science and Technology Advisory Council during the presidency of Barack Obama.

His work at the center that bears his name, created in 2004 in Mexico, was vital for the Mexican capital to reduce the very high polluting emissions since the 1990s.

Molina did not fear that his scientific voice would have echoes in politics.

In 1995 the Swedish academy awarded his research dated 1974 and signed together with his colleagues, the American Frank Sherwood Rowland and the Dutch Paul Jozef Crutzen for launching a threat of how chlorofluorocarbon gases present in everyday objects such as aerosols or thermal insulators damaged the ozone layer.

His findings were vital for this type of gases to be reduced and banned.

This led to the signing of the Montreal Protocol, one of the first agreements aimed at reducing human impact on the environment.

Molina is one of the three Mexicans who have been awarded the Nobel.

The list of recognitions that he added in a life dedicated to the defense of the environment is long.

He was recognized with more than 40 honorary degrees and winner of the 1983 Tyler Energy and Ecology Awards and the Champions of the Earth awarded by the United Nations.

He is the only Mexican recipient of the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, a distinction that was hung around his neck by Obama.