Carothers, Wallace Hume (1896-1937)

US chemist who carried out research into polymerization. He discovered that some polymers were fibre-forming, and in 1931 he produced neoprene, one of the first synthetic rubbers, and in 1935, nylon.

Carothers was born in Burlington, Iowa, and studied at Illinois and Harvard. In 1928 he became head of organic chemistry research at the DuPont research laboratory in Wilmington, Delaware. He committed suicide some years later by swallowing cyanide.

Much of Carothers's research effort was directed at producing a polymer that could be drawn out into a fibre. His first successful experiments involved polyesters, but for finer fibres with enough strength to emulate silk, he turned to polyamides. Nylon is a linear chain polymer which can be cold-drawn after extrusion through spinnerets to orientate the molecules parallel to each other so that lateral hydrogen bonding takes place.

Carothers also worked on synthetic rubbers. Neoprene, first produced commercially in 1932, is resistant to heat, light, and most solvents.