Joe Farman (1930-2013)

摘要

Joe Farman led a team of scientists to make one of the most important geophysical discoveries of the twentieth century. In 1985, the group from the British Antarctic Survey discovered a hole in the ozone layer - the atmospheric shield that absorbs ultraviolet rays. Their seminal article in Nature helped to convince scientists, the public, politicians and even the chemical industry that synthetic chemicals had driven a 40% decline in ozone levels over Antarctica in less than a decade. Farman, who died in Cambridge, UK, on 11 May, was born in Norfolk in 1930. As a student at King Edward VI's Grammar School in Norwich, he won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College at the University of Cambridge, where he studied natural sciences. After graduating in 1953, he worked on guided missiles for three years at de Havilland Propellers, a British company. He then joined the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, which later became the British Antarctic Survey, the national Antarctic research operation.