Thomas Midgley, Jr.
Channel: C0nc0rdance
Date: 23/07/2010

"Thomas Midgley, Jr. (May 18, 1889 -- November 2, 1944), was an American mechanical engineer turned chemist. He developed both the tetraethyl lead (TEL) additive to gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons  (CFCs), and held over a hundred patents. While lauded at the time for his discoveries, today his legacy is seen as far more mixed considering the serious negative environmental impacts of these innovations. One historian remarked that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history."
-Wikipedia entry, "Thomas Midgley, Jr."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley,_Jr.


Thanks to a "Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson for the inspiration and introduction to the work of Thomas Midgley, Jr.
http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/0767908171

Some sources:
Inventor's Hall of Fame
http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/193.html

Charles F Kettering's memoirs, on Midgley
http://books.nap.edu/html/biomems/tmidgley.pdf

Ozone Watch
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/