Enough for One Lifetime: Wallace Carothers, Inventor of NylonChemical Heritage Foundation, 1996 - 345 psl. This is a story of invention and chemistry and the ineluctable fate of the inventor of nylon. Wallace Carothers was hired by DuPont in 1928 to lead a program called basic research. Carothers brought a passion to his work, and wanted to synthesize large molecules that would challenge Emil Fischer's largest molecule of 4200 molecular weight. In a burst of creativity in the spring of 1930, Carothers gave us our first truly synthetic rubber and fiber. The rubber quickly became neoprene; the fiber, in time, led to nylon. Carothers took an infant science called polymer chemistry, defined it, and guided it toward its present maturity. He gave us condensation polymerization. Hermes tells Carothers' story - his sudden, dramatic research successes and his relentless slide into depression, alcohol, and suicide - through Carothers' revealing letters to his professional colleagues (Roger Adams, C. S. Marvel, John R. Johnson) and his family and college classmates. At the end, Carothers' habit was to hide himself from his co-workers and friends. Hermes' narrative searches for the shrouded heart of the inventor's story by using stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald and other contemporaries as parables from which Carothers' truth may be drawn. |
Turinys
19 | |
Paris and Harvard | 43 |
The Road to Pure Science | 57 |
DuPont Hires Carothers | 73 |
Arrow of Discovery | 87 |
We Will Have Quite a Lot of Things in My Division To Show You | 101 |
Elmer Boltons Chemical Department | 119 |
A Gathering of Seven Friends | 225 |
A Second Superb Idea | 233 |
Carothers Marries | 247 |
At the Philadelphia Institute | 257 |
In the Alps with Carothers | 269 |
Isobel Carothers Dies | 277 |
Wallace Carothers Swallows Cyanide and Dies | 283 |
DuPont and Ira Carothers | 293 |
A Synthetic Rubber and a Synthetic Silk Enough for One Lifetime | 133 |
1932 Looks Pretty Black to Me Just Now | 143 |
A Struggle Over Research Objectives | 155 |
The Invention of Nylon | 179 |
Carothers Disappears | 189 |
A Year at Wawaset Park | 209 |
What Is the Family Illness? | 307 |
Chemistry Cited | 319 |
Acknowledgments | 325 |
Bibliography | 329 |
Index | 335 |
Pagrindiniai terminai ir frazės
acid Adams Papers alcohol American Chemical Society April Arthur Pardee atoms Benger carbon Carothers to John Carothers to Roger Carothers wrote Charles M. A. Stine chemical department chemists Chicago chloroprene Collins Conant Corporate Strategy David depression diacid drinking DuPont R&D Elmer Bolton Elmer K Experimental Station February fiber Frances Gelvin Spencer Frances Spencer friends fundamental research Greenewalt Hagley Museum Harvard Helen Carothers Hermes Hohman Illinois Archives interview with Adeline interview with Matthew invention Ira Carothers Isobel Jack Johnson John Kenly Journal Julian Hill knew Kyle laboratory Labovsky Lenher letter Library Collection Matthew E Moines molecular weight molecules Museum and Library November nylon organic chemistry Pardee patent Philadelphia polyamide polyesters polymer polymerization rayon reaction Roger Adams Science and Corporate scientific scientists Smith Strange structure Sweetman synthetic rubber talk Tarkio tion Urbana Wallace Carothers Wallace Hume Carothers Wallace's weeks Whiskey Acres Wilko Machetanz Wilmington York