All of this was purely theoretical research. But when the polyesters showed promise as
synthetic silk, the pressure then came to pursue that end. Though Carothers didn't like
product-oriented research, the knowledge he had gained in his theoretical studies made it
possible for him to design exactly the material that was needed. The polyesters he invented
at that time proved unsuitable, so he simply switched from
polyesters to polyamides, and nylon was born.
After inventing nylon, DuPont threw all its energy into making it a useful
commercial product. This didn't interest Carothers. Instead, he and
a new DuPont scientist named Paul J. Flory
began working on new theories to describe the behavior of macromolecules.
As always, discovering new knowledge and understanding was his passion.
Making nylon into the huge industry it is today would be left to other
people.
Nylon is the most famous result of the science Wallace Carothers did.
But nylon was part of the bigger story of his research. While his bosses
were looking for synthetic silk, Carothers was more interested in discovering
new knowledge. Nylon came about as a result of his quest to fill in the
voids of our understanding. His quest to prove Staudinger's macromolecular
theory led to his own theory of step-growth
polymerization. To prove his own theories, he had his scientists make
the first polyesters.
