2024 Jan-Feb RETA Breeze

CREDIT: COURTESY OF UCI LIBRARIES’ SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES

The Refrigeration Historian Volume XXXI

While it did not make national headlines, March 10, 2022 marked the 10th anniversary of the death of Sherwood Rowland, more precisely F. Sherwood Rowland. If you are unfamiliar with the name of F. Sherwood Rowland, never fear. You have probably praised him or cursed him without ever knowing his name. Perhaps it says something of the human condi tion that one’s work can stir such emotion in others. Frank Sherwood Rowland, or Sherry as he was called by friends, forever changed the refrigeration industry. He was responsible for the “death” of CFCs, and even though it never went away, and the rebirth of ammonia.

Sherry was the middle son of an Ohio Wesleyan Mathematics professor. He was born June 28, 1927 in Delaware, OH and was an extremely gifted student, having graduated high school at the age of 15. A gifted athlete as well as scholar, Sherry played Varsity Basketball and semi-pro fessional baseball. Sherry studied at Chicago University. He then trained as a Navy radar operator and served during World War II. After leaving the Navy, Sherry started his career at Princeton University as an instructor. He would stay at Princeton from 1952 through 1956. In 1956, Sherry would relocate to the University of Kansas where he would be an assistant professor until 1964.

Sherry began his career as a full-time professor of Chemistry at the University of California in Irvine in 1964. It’s important to remember that the ’60s were a very volatile time at American universities. A social revolution was underway, and political studies and protests predominated campuses across the nation. In this backdrop, Sherry conducted revolutionary work in the traditional field of chemistry during the political hotbed that was the California college scene. Perhaps this makes his work even more remarkable. He contin ued in this position until his death in 2012. A favorite quote concerning the gravity of Sherry’s work was a comment he made to his wife during his research.