Hartwig Müller
Moderation: Klaus-Peter Jäckel
When he began his career in 1977, the author first came into contact with the products of human activities in the form of the small molecule CF4. Following the laborious processing of huge quantities of air in cryogenic rectification apparatus to obtain krypton and xenon, a trace impurity was found in the krypton that threatened its industrial use as lamp gas. Starting with this incident at the beginning of his professional career, he repeatedly encountered the atmospheric legacy of industrial activities throughout his working life, culminating in the ozone hole discovered in the 1980s and the harmful effects of ground-level ozone. Step by step, these experimental findings are used to illustrate research into the atmosphere and the modern threats to life on Earth posed by the combustion of fossil fuels to generate energy.
