Dave Golden came to SRI in 1963 to work with Sid Benson on thermochemical kinetics and very low-pressure pyrolysis techniques. He began by helping to actually construct their labs from some idle space in the basement of Building 1, as it was known then, and when he left SRI in 1998, he was known internationally as a leader in applying chemical kinetics to the protection of the atmosphere. His career at SRI included a series of increasing leadership roles. He became director of the Thermochemical Kinetics group in 1976. He built up the group whose work attracted both international recognition and strong projects that were a vital part of SRI’s science programs. He was director of the Chemistry Laboratory beginning in 1988, followed by promotion to the Vice Presidency of Physical Sciences in 1991.
Although Dave Golden always had a passion for fundamental chemical kinetics research, he also had a keen eye for the practical. Shortly after the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, it was proposed that chlorine activation on polar stratospheric clouds could be a key step in the ozone loss mechanism. He immediately realized that his group at SRI could make an important contribution by measuring the kinetics of chlorine-nitrate reactions on ice surfaces representative of polar stratospheric clouds. Bringing together researchers from various laboratories, including Maggie Tolbert, Michel Rossi and Ripu Malhotra, and with only internal SRI funding to keep things going, Dave Golden coordinated experiments using a Knudsen cell reactor, which showed that, indeed, chlorine reacted readily with nitrates on ice surfaces under polar stratospheric conditions to form gaseous chlorine and condensed nitric acid. The gaseous chlorine was then poised to destroy ozone when sunlight returned in the Austral spring. This work represented an important link in unraveling how the Antarctic ozone hole is formed.
The paper on this work shared the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Award for the best paper in Science for 1987-1988 with a paper on a similar subject by the 1995 Nobel Prize winner Mario Molina and coworkers.
For 35 years at SRI, Dave Golden was a leader in advancing thermochemical research while recruiting and mentoring others to advance that knowledge even further. These scientists carried SRI’s reputation throughout the world. Dave Golden made a lasting contribution to SRI in the number of people who grew professionally under his leadership. He left SRI the legacy of a strong reputation for applying basic science to real world problems and a continuing chain of scientists who train new scientists all over the world.