In the late 1920s Charles M. A. Stine was the assistant to the Chemical Department Director of E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Company, and in this position he was in charge of DuPont's main research facility in Wilmington, Delaware known as Experimental Station.

In 1926 he proposed to DuPont's board of directors that it should establish a program of fundamental scientific research. Stine felt that to make new product breakthroughs, DuPont needed a store house of general scientific knowledge from which to draw. Fundamental scientific investigation would provide this knowledge.

When DuPont management agreed to Stine's plan, it was Stine who set about to staff his new fundamental research program. He first sought renowned university chemists, but none would accept a job at DuPont. Roger Adams, professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois, turned down an offer to head the organic chemistry division of Stine's program. But he also recommended an unknown former student of his to Stine. That former student was, of course, Wallace Carothers.

Stine was promoted in 1930 and leadership of Experimental Station passed to Elmer K. Bolton. Bolton was more interested in applied research than basic science, and it was under his pragmatic direction that the basic scientific discoveries that Wallace Carothers had made under Stine were turned into the commercial product nylon.