Wallace Carothers

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Dr. Wallace Hume Carothers (April 27, 1896 - April 29, 1937) was the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont. He was born in Burlington, Iowa.

Dr. Carothers began his academic career as a faculty member of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1924 where he came to know Roger Adams who was a colleague of E.K. Bolton at DuPont. Carothers became head of the chemistry department at Tarkio College in Missouri, a position that he took on while he was still a student. In addition, he served for one year as chemistry instuctor at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, SD. He moved to Harvard University in 1926, and then came to DuPont to work on polymers in 1928 with E.K. Bolton. In April 1930, Carothers' team created neoprene, the first synthetic rubber, and synthesized the first polyester superpolymer, a forerunner to nylon. Carothers carried out experiments in 1935 that resulted in the production of nylon. In 1936, he became the first industrial chemist to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Carothers, thought to suffer from bipolar disorder, committed suicide in 1937 by drinking lemon juice laced with potassium cyanide. His death came two years before the introduction of nylon fiber and the resulting synthetic fiber revolution.

Dr. Carothers was an avid reader of poetry and lover of classical music. He was survived by his wife and a daughter, Jane, whom he never knew because his wife was two months pregnant with their only child when he died.

Carothers' biography was written by Dr. Matt Hermes, who worked at the Central Research Department at DuPont where Carothers completed his seminal work.

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