April 27th marks the birthdate of the chemist Wallace Hume Carothers, credited with leading the invention of Neoprene artificial rubber and Nylon synthetic fiber. Carothers worked as a chemist in E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company's Fundamental Research Program from 1928 until his death in 1937.
Carothers' work at the DuPont Experimental Station focused on polymerization and the ways in which polymers structurally analogous to cellulose and silk could be prepared. In early 1930 the chemists in Carothers' laboratory produced neoprene, the first laboratory-synthesized fiber and first commercially successful synthetic rubber. This ca. 1932 photograph from Hagley Library's DuPont Company Product Information photographs (Accession 1972.341) shows Carothers demonstrating the properties of neoprene. Nylon, the first synthetic polymer fibre to be spun from a melt, was developed in 1934.
During the next two years, Carothers suffered frequent bouts of depression. On April 29, 1937, three weeks after the basic Nylon patent application was filed, he committed suicide. In 1946, the nylon research laboratory at the Experimental Station, Wilmington, Del., was dedicated as the Carothers Research Laboratory in his honor.
To see more about Carothers in the Hagley Digital Archives, including our Oral history interviews on Wallace Carothers (Accession 1994.311) collection, just click here.