The road to nylon began with this statement in a letter from Charles M. A. Stine to DuPont management, in which he proposed that DuPont establish a program of fundamental research at their main research center in Wilmington, Delaware, known as the Experimental Station. The idea was approved and the search was on for scientists to staff the new fundamental research laboratory. This laboratory would become known as "Purity Hall," because "pure" science was carried out there.

No scientist of any fame would accept the job as director of the organic chemistry division of the new program. Industrial work was considered too lowly for academic chemists at the time. But one scientist who turned down the job, Roger Adams of the University of Illinois, recommended that DuPont offer the position to his former student Wallace Carothers. Carothers had been teaching chemistry at Harvard for a few semesters, and initially turned down the offer, but he finally accepted, with assurances that he would be allowed to pursue "pure" research.

Stine believed that polymer research would be useful, considering so many of DuPont's products were polymers. Carothers was also interested in polymers. He was interested in Hermann Staudinger's macromolecular theory, which proposed that polymers (materials such as cotton, rubber, plastics) were made of giant macromolecules. When Carothers began work at DuPont, proving this theory was his first order of business.