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He was the liveliest of them all. |
While working as an assistant under Carothers, Gerard Berchet was the person whose hands actually made the first nylon 6-6. The two had met while Carothers was visiting Paris in 1926. Carothers convinced the Frenchman to come to America, and Berchet eventually came to work at DuPont under Carothers.
Berchet had accidently made the first NeopreneTM rubber in 1930, though Arnold M. Collins was first to notice and investigate its rubbery properties. When Carothers decided to make polyamides, he assigned Berchet to make a large number of different nylons. On 28 February 1935 he hit upon nylon 6-6.
Berchet enjoyed living. Like Carothers he was a lover of music, and acted in an amateur theatre company for fifty years.
References
1. Hermes, Matthew. Enough for One Lifetime: Wallace Carothers, Inventor of Nylon. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society; Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 1996.2. Labovsky, Joseph. Oral history by John K. Smith, 24 July 1996. Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation.
Photo credit
Gerard Berchet - From 'Nylon: the First 25 Years,' DuPont Magazine, 1963, p. 7, reproduced courtesy DuPont.