Google celebrates Nobel Laureate Dr Mario Molina's 80th birth anniversary with a creative doodle

Search engine giant Google honoured late Mexican Nobel Laureate Mario Molina on his 80th birth anniversary on Sunday with a creative doodle.

The creative doodle features the Mexican chemist in an animated avatar. The second 'O' from GOOGLE turned into O3 for oxygen and the Sun replaced the third 'O'.

In the second half of the doodle, the portion of earth with industries and residential complexes is featured with the depleting ozone later. The doodle also showed a spraying can and a refrigerator.

Born on March 19, 1943, the Nobel Laureate in Chemistry was always passionate about science as a child. He would spend hours watching tiny organisms glide across his toy microscope. When he was young, he transformed his bathroom into a makeshift science laboratory.

Dr Molina graduated in chemical engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Later, we got his advanced degree from the University of Freiburg in Germany. "After completing his studies, he moved to the United States to conduct postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley, and later at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology," Google's website for Doodle said.

In the early 1970s, Dr Molina started researching the impact of synthetic chemicals on Earth's atmosphere. He discovered that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were hurting the ozone layer, causing ultraviolet radiation to reach Earth's surface.

CFCs consist of nontoxic components like chlorine, fluorine and carbon. It is used in some air conditioners, aerosol sprays, refrigerants and solvents, among other things.

In 1995, Dr Molina won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry after he and his co-researchers published their findings about CFCs in the Nature journal.

"The groundbreaking research became the foundation of the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty that successfully banned the production of nearly 100 ozone-depleting chemicals. This international alliance is considered one of the most impactful environmental treaties ever made — a precedent that shows governments can work together effectively to tackle climate change," the website said.

Google went on to thank Dr Molina's critical scientific discoveries for bringing the planet’s ozone layer back on track. On its website, it also thanked Dr Molina for his years of research to change the world.

The Mario Molina Center, a leading research institute in Mexico, carried on his work to create a more sustainable world.

Dr Molina passed away on October 7, 2020, at the age of 77 following a heart attack.