Joseph Charles Farman

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(7 August 193011 May 2013) was a British geophysicist who worked for the British Antarctic Survey. Together with Brian Gardiner and

Jon Shanklin Jonathan Shanklin is a meteorologist who has worked at the British Antarctic Survey since 1977. Together with Joe Farman and Brian G. Gardiner he discovered the "Ozone Hole" in the 1980s. Shanklin has described his role at the BAS as being th ...

, he published the discovery of the

ozone hole Ozone depletion consists of two related events observed since the late 1970s: a steady lowering of about four percent in the total amount of ozone in Earth's atmosphere, and a much larger springtime decrease in stratospheric ozone (the ozone lay ...

over

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

, having used

Dobson ozone spectrophotometer The Dobson spectrophotometer, also known as Dobsonmeter, Dobson spectrometer, or just Dobson is one of the earliest instruments used to measure atmospheric ozone. History The Dobson spectrometer was invented in 1924 by Gordon Dobson. A histor ...

s. Their results were first published on 16 May 1985.

Education

He was educated at

Norwich School Norwich School (formally King Edward VI Grammar School, Norwich) is a selective English independent day school in the close of Norwich Cathedral, Norwich. Among the oldest schools in the United Kingdom, it has a traceable history to 1096 as a ...

, where he was a prefect in Coke House, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he gained an undergraduate degree in

Natural Sciences Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...

Awards

He received numerous honours for this discovery, including the

Society of Chemical Industry The Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) is a learned society set up in 1881 "to further the application of chemistry and related sciences for the public benefit". Offices The society's headquarters is in Belgrave Square, London. There are semi-in ...

(SCI) Environment Medal, the

Chree Medal and Prize The Edward Appleton Medal and Prize is awarded by the Institute of Physics for distinguished research in environmental, earth or atmospheric physics. Originally named after Charles Chree, the British physicist and former President of the Physica ...

, membership of the

Global 500 Roll of Honour The Global 500 Roll of Honour was an award given from 1987 to 2003 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The award recognized the environmental achievements of individuals and organizations around the world. A successor system of UNEP ...

, and a

in the

2000 New Year Honours The New Year Honours 2000 for the United Kingdom and New Zealand were announced on 31 December 1999, to celebrate the year passed and mark the beginning of 2000. The ''Honours list'' is a list of people who have been awarded one of the various ...

. For his critical contribution to saving the ozone layer, Farman was a winner of the 2021 Future of Life Award along with Stephen O. Andersen and Susan Solomon. Dr. Jim Hansen, former Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Director of Columbia University’s Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions said, “In Farman, Solomon and Andersen we see the tremendous impact individuals can have not only on the course of human history, but on the course of our planet’s history. My hope is that others like them will emerge in today’s battle against climate change.” Professor Brian Greene of Columbia University added, “the 2021 Future of Life award winners show how science can work for the betterment of humanity.”

References

External links

Joe Farman on the discovery of the ozone hole

Listen to an oral history interview with Joseph Farman
- a life story interview recorded fo
An Oral History of British Science
at the British Library
Oral history interview transcript with Joseph Farman on 11 October 1999, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives
- Session I
Oral history interview transcript with Joseph Farman on 12 October 1999, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives
- Session II
Oral history interview transcript with Joseph Farman on 16 March 2009, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives

Oral history interview transcript with Joseph Farman on 16 March 2009 (as part of the Cambridge Seminar Group Session), American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives
1930 births 2013 deaths British geophysicists Commanders of the Order of the British Empire People educated at Norwich School Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Oral History of British Science {{geoscience-bio-stub