Chancellor awarded again

Simon Brown

It’s not often that one man receives global recognition twice in one

week.

UC Irvine Chancellor Ralph J. Cicerone this week was first

unanimously nominated for president of the National Academy of

Sciences and on Friday won the Albert Einstein World Award of

Science.

The award is given by the World Cultural Council, an organization

based in Mexico City that seeks to establish relationships with the

finest institutions of learning worldwide and to gather data and

research to advance mankind. A committee comprising 25 Nobel prize

winners presents the award yearly as a way to recognize an individual

whose work benefits humanity.

Cicerone will receive the award in November in Liege, Belgium

along with a commemorative medal and a check for $10,000.

“Anything with Albert Einstein’s name on it really gets your

attention,” Cicerone said. “I don’t think anyone thinks of me as an

Albert Einstein, so it’s really flattering.”

Cicerone’s research spans several areas in atmospheric chemistry,

but his research into the ozone earned him the honor, Cicerone said.

Beginning in the 1970s, Cicerone and others were just beginning to

understand that damage to the ozone could increase the risk of skin

cancer in people with lighter skin. Cicerone boils his findings about

the ozone down to a simple analogy.

“It’s like having a bathtub where, if some of the water drains

out, it’s OK as long as the water is replaced at an equal rate,” he

said. “We discovered that the chemicals humans were releasing into

the atmosphere were causing a chemistry which destroyed the ozone

faster than it could be replaced.”

The award is one of many accolades for Cicerone, who also received

the United Nations Environment Program Ozone Award in 1997 and the

Bower Award and Prize for Scientific Achievement in 1999. These

honors have put Cicerone among the most respected in his field.

But his highest honor, perhaps, is his recent nomination as

president of the National Academy of Sciences, said Sherwood Rowland,

a UCI colleague and recipient of the Einstein Award in 1994. Rowland

also won the Nobel Prize in 1995.

“The people who have received [the Einstein Award] are all

well-known scientists,” Rowland said. “It is a judgment about

[Cicerone’s] scientific statesmanship. He will now be called upon to

have opinions in all areas of science, and that requires excellent

judgment.”