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Thomas Midgley Jr.: The man who almost destroyed the planet (twice)

Though the dangers of leaded gasoline and CFCs are now well-known, their inventor was once lauded as a hero. But he couldn’t escape the impact of his creations.

Under the direction of Charles Kettering, another influential American inventor and head of research at GM, Midgley worked his way through thousands of substances — including arsenic, sulfur and silicon — in a quest to find one that reduced knocking when added to gasoline. Just years after the invention of Ethyl, Midgley — again spurred by Kettering — turned his attention to developing a nontoxic, nonflammable alternative to refrigerant gases such as ammonia, which were used in appliances and air conditioners at the time, leading to a series of fatal accidents in the 1920s. A biographical memoir from the National Academy of Sciences, written by his mentor Kettering in 1947, contains nothing but praise and ends by saying that Midgley left behind “a great heritage to the world from a busy, a diversified, and a highly creative life.”

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