The Thread That Nature Never Made

On February 16, 1937, Wallace Carothers was awarded U.S. Patent No. 2,071,250 for a synthetic polymer fiber. He worked for DuPont. The fiber was nylon. It would become one of the most commercially successful materials ever invented. Carothers would be dead within ten weeks.

Carothers was a chemist from Iowa recruited by DuPont in 1928 to lead fundamental research in organic chemistry. He was brilliant, methodical, and suffered from severe depression. At DuPont, he investigated how small molecules link together to form long chains. The work produced neoprene, the first synthetic rubber, in 1931.

In 1935, his team synthesized a polyamide fiber by reacting adipic acid with hexamethylenediamine. The polymer was strong, elastic, resistant to water, and could be drawn into fine threads. DuPont recognized its potential immediately. They called it "fiber 66" internally. The public would know it as nylon.

sample of the first dupont nylon, december 1939. source: wikimedia commons

DuPont announced nylon in 1938. Nylon stockings debuted at the 1939 World's Fair and went on sale in 1940. Four million pairs sold on the first day. During World War II, production was diverted to military use: parachutes, tire cords, ropes, and tents.

Carothers never saw any of it. On April 29, 1937, he checked into a Philadelphia hotel and swallowed potassium cyanide. He was 41. He had been elected to the National Academy of Sciences the year before, the first industrial organic chemist so honored. Depression doesn't negotiate with achievement. The material he invented is everywhere. The man who invented it chose to leave.