Solomon first went to the Antarctic in 1986 as head project scientist with the United States National Ozone Expedition. This was the first expedition, according to Solomon, aimed at measuring not just the ozone, but also the factors affecting it. The team found that the chemistry of the Antarctic stratosphere was "incredibly perturbed," she says. "We didn't expect it to look like another planet." According to Solomon, three-quarters of the chlorine in the atmosphere is anthropogenic, and the extreme cold of arctic regions increases the damaging effect that this chlorine has on the ozone layer.
Solomon, 35, became interested in atmospheric chemistry when she was an undergraduate at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. It was there, she says, that she realized "you don't have to do chemistry in a test tube; you can do it in the real world." Solomon earned her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry ...
