NOBEL PRIZE-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen will be on the island next month to deliver a lecture on climate change and atmospheric chemistry.
The 74-year-old Dutchman is due at the old Paphos powerhouse on October 12, under the auspices of the Paphos Mayor. An introductory speech will be given by Under-Secretary to the President, Titos Christofides.
Crutzen is being brought to the island courtesy of the Cyprus Institute. A spokesman yesterday told the Mail that Crutzen visited Cyprus back in 2001 and “was involved in overseeing how an international research institution could be established here.
“His main expertise is in chemistry, something which is part of our institute’s research agenda,” he said.
Crutzen, who is a member of the Cyprus Institute’s Scientific Council, is best known for his research on ozone depletion. He lists his main research interests as stratospheric and tropospheric chemistry, and their role in the biogeochemical cycles and climate.
Along with Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland, Crutzen was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995, “for work in atmospheric chemistry, in particular ozone depletion.”
He currently works at the Department of Atmospheric Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California.
Forty PhD students from various European educational institutions have been selected to attend the lecture, along with 20 renowned climate change professors.
Entrance is also open to the public.
According to the Institute spokesman, “it is the opening event of an international climate change workshop, co-organised by the Cyprus and Max Planck institutes.
“Climate change is such a hot issue worldwide and a subject which affects the eastern Mediterranean to a large degree,” he explained.
“It will be a great honour to have Crutzen here as he is the father of climate change research.”
Also commenting was Institute President Costas Papanicolas. “We are extremely proud and privileged that Crutzen is part of our Scientific Council and his lecture here is on an issue so important, that it affects all of mankind.”
