Wallace Carothers with neoprene, 1930. Gift of Joseph Labovsky. CHF Collections. Wallace Carothers (1896–1937) Best known as the inventor of nylon, Wallace Carothers was much more than the creator of one useful polymer. The research that led to the invention of nylon also demonstrated the existence of macromolecules, greatly bolstering the macromolecular theory of Herman Staudinger. Born near Burlington, Iowa, in 1896 and growing up in Des Moines, Carothers studied chemistry first at Tarkio College in Missouri and later earned his masters and doctoral degrees at the University of Illinois. After teaching for three semesters at Harvard, Carothers left to work at DuPont in 1928. Given nearly free reign to investigate whatever interested him, Carothers set about to answer a question central to the controversy over Staudinger’s theory. Since some felt macromolecules could not exist, Carothers set out to test this notion by attempting to create synthetic macromolecules. He succeeded in 1930, and his success silenced one of the main criticisms of Staudinger’s theory. It was merely coincidence that the synthetic macromolecules Carothers created happened to behave like natural silk. The next five years were spent looking for a synthetic polymer that would be a practical silk substitute. Success came in 1935 in the form of a polymer that would become known as nylon. While nylon was an instant hit when it first went on sale in the form of women’s hosiery in 1940, Carothers did not live to see this success. A lifelong sufferer of clinical depression, he took his own life in 1937.