Birks, who recently retired after 25 years at the University of Colorado, Boulder, may be best known for co-authoring the concept of nuclear winter.
"In 1982, while the Cold War was going on, Paul Crutzen and I carried out a study of what would happen to the atmosphere if there were nuclear war," he said. "So we discovered there could be enough smoke and other atmospheric debris generated in the aftermath to clog the atmosphere, block the sun's rays and cause a significant drop in temperature."
He currently works on a technique called vertical profiling -- studying how columns of air change from Earth's surface to high atmospheric layers -- with a company he co-founded four years ago with former student Mark Bollinger. 2B Technologies develops ever-smaller and less costly instruments that attach to balloons and measure chemicals such as ozone and nitric oxide.
Interestingly, a nitric oxide monitor may have medical benefit as well. The gas's presence in human breath is a signal for the inflammation characteristic of asthma.
"The idea is to one day have a home monitor that would measure nitric oxide levels and thus tell you how much asthma medicine to take that day," he said. "Many asthma medicines have side effects, so only taking as much as you need at a time would help minimize them."
Birks said he always liked science as a boy and had the usual microscope and rock collection. "But I went to a rural school in Arkansas where we didn't have much opportunity to get into science -- except for one particular teacher, Mr. Earl Parks, who really went out of his way. He was the person who really got me interested in pursuing chemistry," he remembered.
Birks received his undergraduate degree from the University of Arkansas in 1968 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1974. He is a member of the ACS division of analytical chemistry.
The ACS Award for Creative Advances in Environmental Science and Technology is sponsored by Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., in memory of Joseph J. Breen.