The inventor of kevlar

The woman who invented kevlar was named Stephanie Louis Kwolek. She recieved a B.s. with a major in chemistry from Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1946. Looking to save up for medical school she took a job with a research company called DuPont. "in 1964 she discovered that under certain conditions molecules of extended chain aromatic polyamides would form liquid crystalline solutions, which could be spun into highly oriented, very strongm, very stiff fibres" (er, whatever that means ). The resulting fibre is now known as kevlar . In 1995 kwolek was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame. In 1996 she recieved the National Model of Tehcnology. And she has pattened 17 different materials over her career.



The full article I got this info from is here: Kwolek: Inventor of Kevlar

[ 10. January 2003, 17:24: Message edited by: SunSpot ]

SunSpot, thanks for this post. I was just trying to explain to my lil' sis what kevlar was. As she is the best lil' sis in the world - she got me a fire stick for Christmas! It just got here today and I'm dying to use it now. If only there weren't blizzard like conditions out...

Bump

Purely because I found it whilst searching for another thread and thoguht it was a useful tit bit for this here forum

So i was just reading this!.. original post was posted jan 2003!.. only one response untill November 2006... almost 4 years has passed and what an interesting fact to have read..

thanks Chutney for the bump.

Good stuff.

New, Better, Working Link.

whilst looking for more info apparently kevlar deteriorates under alkali conditions. maybe this could help to keep good quality wicks over time.. maybe?

(off topic, i guess, but i found it interesting)

Du Pont is not a nice company...