Title and Description Page
Childhood and Early Education 1
Growing up on a farm in Hamilton, Texas. Siblings. Recollections of elementary and high school teachers.
Undergraduate Education 2
Scholarship to Abilene Christian College. Struggle to continue higher education during the Depression. Break from college to take a full-time teaching job in a rural school. Summer terms at North Texas State College. Graduation from Abilene in 1941 and a further year teaching in Clyde, Texas. Memories of faculty at both colleges.
Dow Chemical Company 6
Circumstances of obtaining position as control chemist in Freeport, Texas. Transfer to Dow Magnesium Corporation and return to the gas laboratories of the main company. Subsequent move to the research laboratory. Polymerization studies of ethylene oxide and related monomers. Problems of the polymerization exotherm; control of molecular weight and its distribution. Development of major program on ionic polymerization. IUPAC meeting on ionic polymerization. Synthetic lubricants. Academic courses at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and University of Houston. Urethane developments; Nutrifoam. Birth of Gel Permeation Chromatography and the impetus for instrumental innovation. Colleagues at Dow and their styles of management. Polycarbonate resins.
Senior Research Management; transfer to Midland 30
Reflections on R&D management and its status within the company organization. Product stewardship. Energy and environmental concerns. Formation of the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology. Start of the Council for Chemical Research; industrial and academic research cooperation; academic research funding. Problems of senior management in present day industrial chemical research and development. The perceived image of chemistry and the chemical industry.
Notes 46
Index 47