Paul Crutzen received his Ph.D. in meteorology from Stockholm University in 1973, producing a thesis that looked at pollution of the stratosphere by high-flying aircraft.
In 1980, Crutzen became a member of the Max Planck Institute in Mainz, Germany. In 1992, he became a part-time professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego and at Seoul National University, South Korea.
Together with two colleagues, F. Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina, Crutzen received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for alerting the world to the possibility that human-manufactured gaseous compounds could destroy the ozone layer.
In 2000, Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer proposed using the term anthropocene for the current geological epoch in order to emphasize the central role of mankind in geology and ecology.
Crutzen delivered the Beatty Lecture on March 8, 2000, titled "The Importance of the Tropics in Atmospheric Chemistry".
Image: Carsten Costard
