Not long after the death of Carothers in 1937, Flory left DuPont for an academic career.
Over the rest of his life, Flory developed theories describing the behavior of polymers in
solution, the kinetics of other polymerization reactions, the formation of crosslinked systems,
and rubber elasticity. He also pioneered the use of infrared spectroscopy as a tool for
determining the chemical structure of polymers. So crucial was his work that he recieved the
Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1974.
The Nylon Legacy - Life After Nylon
The Nylon Legacy - Stephanie Kwolek and
Bulletproof Vests
1. Furukawa, Yasu, Inventing Polymer Science. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1998.
2. Hermes, Matthew. Enough for One Lifetime: Wallace Carothers, Inventor of Nylon.
Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society; Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 1996.
Paul J. Flory was a physical chemist
whom Wallace Carothers had hired in 1934 to help study the more mathematical
aspects of the new materials he had invented. In the short time Flory
and Carothers worked together at DuPont they began working on theories
which Flory would refine in later years. Flory began by studying the kinetics
and stoichiometry of nylon polymerization, the size of the macromolecules
produced, and the molecular weight distributions obtained. In a sample
of nylon, not all of the large chain-like molecules have the same size.
Flory and Carothers developed ways to determine what the average chain
length would be for nylon produced under given conditions.
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