Papers of Wallace H. Carothers

Collection

Identifier: 98-21

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

For a more detailed inventory, please view this record in our library catalog: https://othmerlib.sciencehistory.org/record=b1049968~S6

This collection is not a unified compendium, rather it is an assemblage of surviving materials.

Dates

Creation: 1924-1978

Creator

Carothers, Wallace Hume, 1896-1937 (Person)
Flory, Paul J. (Person)
Carothers, Helen (Person)
Hill, Julian W. (Julian Werner), 1904-1996 (Person)

Language of Materials

Text in english.

Biographical sketch

Wallace H. Carothers was born in Burlington Iowa on April 27 1896. He attended undergraduate and graduate classes at the University of Illinois Urbana where he studied under Roger Adams. In 1928 after several years teaching undergraduates at Harvard he accepted a position in Du Pont's newly formed fundamental research program. By 1930 he and his group, which included Julian W. Hill and the future Nobel Laureate in chemistry, Paul Flory, discovered both Nylon and Neoprene. Carothers suffered from depression and died by suicide in 1937.