8 ms·

Stephanie L. Kwolek, Inventor of Kevlar, Is Dead at 90

123 points by 001sky 12y ago

aperrien 12y ago
I would not be around mucking with code today if not for this woman's work. May she rest in peace.
- JoshTriplett 12y ago
  That sounds like an interesting story; would you consider telling it?
aaronbrethorst 12y ago
great backstory: I had been looking for a lightweight fiber strong and stiff enough to use in reinforcement. At just about this time—it was 1964—there was talk of a gasoline shortage, and we thought we could use a reinforcing fiber lighter than steel for radial tires. A lighter-weight vehicle would require less gasoline. We were not very successful with the tire industry. It was using cheaper steel wire for reinforcement, and the change to fiber would have meant changing machinery at the tire plants. So we expanded our research for new end-use applications, and we now have more than 200 end-use applications for Kevlar. http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanheritage.com%2Farticles%2Fmagazine%2Fit%2F2003%2F3%2F2003_3_60.shtml&date=2009-05-24 http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americ...
- resoluteteeth 12y ago
  Incidentally, the use of Kevlar may not have caught on for cars, but it's pretty common in bicycle tires, so it has in some sense succeeded in the original intended application in the end as well.
  - hga 12y ago
    I think its use in tires is a lot more common now that radials have replaced the bias-ply tires that were most commonly used when Kevlar was invented. The latter are good for bad roads, but I have the impression that they're not particular about the reinforcing material they use. A material science engineer who worked at a DuPont nylon plant in the '80s mentioned that nylon was used for bias-ply tires for mostly Third World markets. Goodyear, at least, seems to make a number of models with Kevlar: https://www.google.com/search?q=kevlar+radial+tire https://www.google.com/search?q=kevlar+radial+tire But of course Kevlar is a trademark of DuPont, general patents on it have long expired. A more general search https://www.google.com/search?q=aramid+radial+tire https://www.google.com/search?q=aramid+radial+tire using aramid instead of Kevlar is also fruitful, especially this 1974 story http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cen-v052n008.p007a http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cen-v052n008.p007a about Goodyear entering the market with them. That's very well timed, less than half a year after the 1973 oil shock, when fuel efficiency became a very big thing. No doubt they were working on such tires, and the shock provided a perfect marketing opportunity, in addition to the other benefits Kevlar brought to the table. "Steel belted" is a phrase that I'm sure is hard to market against, as I recall it was used a lot in the '70s....
dnautics 12y ago
I have always put Stephanie Kwolek on my "long odds but beyond deserving" list for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Alas, she never won it.
jcreedon 12y ago
> Kevlar has generated several billion dollars in revenue for the company. Ms. Kwolek did not directly benefit from it financially, however; she signed over patent royalties to DuPont. This is kind of sad to me. I realize it is more or less standard practice to sign over all IP rights to your employer, but this was a significantly greater contribution than your standard invention. Reminds me of the engineer who created the blue LED who only received a bonus of <$200. He later sued and got closer to $9m. (http://www.out-law.com/page-5208 http://www.out-law.com/page-5208)
- dueprocess 12y ago
  Charles Goodyear, the inventor of vulcanized rubber, wrote in his memoir, "Inventors are the children of misfortune and want." Goodyear himself suffered unbelievable hardships during his life, even after making one of the greatest discoveries of the nineteenth century. It's a good a time as ever to reveal "Die Penniless". It's a checklist / personal assessment system for creative geniuses who want to make history. For first access when it launches, please sign up here: http://diepenniless.com http://diepenniless.com
- cpwright 12y ago
  She signed the patent royalties over to DuPont, but that is the deal that she made. There is at least an equal chance that she never would have created this material (there are scores of other men and women who have worked for DuPont, but not an equal number of such incredible breakthroughs). She traded away the ability to hit a home run for lower variance in compensation. She collected a salary, and I would hope that she indirectly financially benefited from potential promotions or raises. Also, without the resources of DuPont she never would have been able to create this material. It is a great invention, and she is certainly a great inventor; but just because she didn't become fabulously wealthy doesn't mean she was treated poorly.
  - jjoonathan 12y ago
    > Also, without the resources of DuPont she never would have been able to create this material. Irrelevant. The need for capital doesn't inherently justify capital receiving ~100% of the proceeds. Her work was also a necessary part of creating the product. > She collected a salary, and I would hope that she indirectly financially benefited from potential promotions or raises. I don't think you understand how bad chemists have it. The guy who invented lipitor ($120 billion in revenue) was unceremoniously laid off from Pfizer for his trouble. He didn't get a penny on top of his salary -- a salary that half of the readers of this post probably wouldn't accept for a software development position. > just because she didn't become fabulously wealthy doesn't mean she was treated poorly No, but the labor force of industrial chemists is generally a heavily deleveraged group. There's an oversupply of them and they absolutely require intensive capital resources for success. That means they get systematically shafted at the bargaining table. They are treated poorly regardless of whether or not this individual incident is sufficient to prove it. Due to the fact that software development has tiny capital requirements and that there are many industrial positions available for software engineers, we are able to negotiate much more reasonable terms of employment (i.e. capture a comparatively respectable fraction of the value we create). We have it good. Unusually good. It's important to remember that this is not because markets operate that way in general. It's a happy accident that has turned out well for us so far. Nothing more, nothing less. The very least we can do is refrain from victim-blaming in industries where labor is not blessed with the same happy accident.
noja 12y ago
Ironically he was stabbed to death while wearing a kevlar vest.
- clvrly 12y ago
  That does not make sense.
- taspeotis 12y ago
  noja 4 hours ago | link | parent | flag Ironically he was stabbed to death while wearing a kevlar vest. You need to work on your reading comprehension: Stephanie L. Kwolek Stephanie L. Stephanie Stephanie is literally the first word in the title and article.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    Both men and women are called "Stephanie", although in the US it is mostly a female name. http://www.babynames.it/boyname/Stephanie-meaning.htm http://www.babynames.it/boyname/Stephanie-meaning.htm The mistake was to assume a male. It doesn't matter what the name was.
    - taspeotis 12y ago
      That pages looks auto-generated and awfully spammy. Apparently Elizabeth is a boys name, too [1]. [1] http://www.babynames.it/boyname/Elizabeth-meaning.htm http://www.babynames.it/boyname/Elizabeth-meaning.htm
      - DanBC 12y ago
        Here's a less spammy site. http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/decades/names1890s.html http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/decades/names1890s.html I don't see what the problem is. "Elizabeth" is a boys name for a tiny number of boys. Both sites mention the tiny number and the old dates, clearly. (This is one of the things Google fails at, I think. "Stephanie" is unlikely to be a name for a man i. english speaking nations, but Google pretty much only returns me English results. Perhaps they need a switch to "allow whole world www results" rather than locking me out of all those other languages.
shrikant 12y ago
> A DuPont spokeswoman estimated that since the 1970s, 3,000 police officers have been saved from bullet wounds through the use of equipment reinforced with Kevlar [...] Does that number seem really low to anybody else?
- hga 12y ago
  Have you ever worn Kevlar body armor? The Feds have rather stupid requirements for it, that don't match the real world, but depend on deformation of clay behind a vest. So what cops wear is stiffer, and perhaps hotter than needed. Although I think heat is unavoidable, there's even relevant lines in Shakespeare's King Henry the Fourth: Like a rich armour worn in heat of day, That scalds with safety. So plenty of cops are killed because they're not wearing their uncomfortable armor; it's sort of like strapping a barrel around your torso. Another factor is that better, albeit more expensive polymers have been developed, especially very long chain polyethylene (as in 1-2 million units long); my next vest will be made from that. Also Kevlar loses its protective strength if wet. There was also a short period where a very bad new polymer was used by at least one company, it quickly degraded, and that cost a few cops their lives. Finally, while the gun-grabbers' campaign against non-existent "cop killer bullets!!!" accomplished nothing directly affecting cops on the ground, indirectly it taught a lot of people that cops wear body armor, resulting, or so I've read without personally drilling down to the raw data, an increase in criminals killing them with head shots. Ah, I should also note that soft body armor saves by preventing penetration, and decreases kinetic impact by stretching the fibers. So a hit can still hurt a lot, enough to potentially fatally distract you during a fight, especially bad if you're alone. My home defense body armor has a hard rifle plate in the front to mitigate this. Ah, I should also add some numbers. There aren't that many cops killed on duty, here's numbers broken down by years: http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/year.html http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/year.htm... I don't think Kevlar body armor went into common use until perhaps the '80s, and without adding heavy rifle plates, which only SWAT teams routinely use (and our troops in the last decade), it offers very little protection against the #1 killer of cops, vehicle related accidents (in them, or struck by them).
  - reader5000 12y ago

123 points by 001sky 12y ago

aperrien 12y ago

I would not be around mucking with code today if not for this woman's work. May she rest in peace.

JoshTriplett 12y ago
That sounds like an interesting story; would you consider telling it?

aaronbrethorst 12y ago

great backstory: I had been looking for a lightweight fiber strong and stiff enough to use in reinforcement. At just about this time—it was 1964—there was talk of a gasoline shortage, and we thought we could use a reinforcing fiber lighter than steel for radial tires. A lighter-weight vehicle would require less gasoline. We were not very successful with the tire industry. It was using cheaper steel wire for reinforcement, and the change to fiber would have meant changing machinery at the tire plants. So we expanded our research for new end-use applications, and we now have more than 200 end-use applications for Kevlar. http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanheritage.com%2Farticles%2Fmagazine%2Fit%2F2003%2F3%2F2003_3_60.shtml&date=2009-05-24 http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americ...

resoluteteeth 12y ago
Incidentally, the use of Kevlar may not have caught on for cars, but it's pretty common in bicycle tires, so it has in some sense succeeded in the original intended application in the end as well.
- hga 12y ago
  I think its use in tires is a lot more common now that radials have replaced the bias-ply tires that were most commonly used when Kevlar was invented. The latter are good for bad roads, but I have the impression that they're not particular about the reinforcing material they use. A material science engineer who worked at a DuPont nylon plant in the '80s mentioned that nylon was used for bias-ply tires for mostly Third World markets. Goodyear, at least, seems to make a number of models with Kevlar: https://www.google.com/search?q=kevlar+radial+tire https://www.google.com/search?q=kevlar+radial+tire But of course Kevlar is a trademark of DuPont, general patents on it have long expired. A more general search https://www.google.com/search?q=aramid+radial+tire https://www.google.com/search?q=aramid+radial+tire using aramid instead of Kevlar is also fruitful, especially this 1974 story http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cen-v052n008.p007a http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cen-v052n008.p007a about Goodyear entering the market with them. That's very well timed, less than half a year after the 1973 oil shock, when fuel efficiency became a very big thing. No doubt they were working on such tires, and the shock provided a perfect marketing opportunity, in addition to the other benefits Kevlar brought to the table. "Steel belted" is a phrase that I'm sure is hard to market against, as I recall it was used a lot in the '70s....

dnautics 12y ago

I have always put Stephanie Kwolek on my "long odds but beyond deserving" list for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Alas, she never won it.

jcreedon 12y ago

> Kevlar has generated several billion dollars in revenue for the company. Ms. Kwolek did not directly benefit from it financially, however; she signed over patent royalties to DuPont. This is kind of sad to me. I realize it is more or less standard practice to sign over all IP rights to your employer, but this was a significantly greater contribution than your standard invention. Reminds me of the engineer who created the blue LED who only received a bonus of <$200. He later sued and got closer to $9m. (http://www.out-law.com/page-5208 http://www.out-law.com/page-5208)

dueprocess 12y ago
Charles Goodyear, the inventor of vulcanized rubber, wrote in his memoir, "Inventors are the children of misfortune and want." Goodyear himself suffered unbelievable hardships during his life, even after making one of the greatest discoveries of the nineteenth century. It's a good a time as ever to reveal "Die Penniless". It's a checklist / personal assessment system for creative geniuses who want to make history. For first access when it launches, please sign up here: http://diepenniless.com http://diepenniless.com
cpwright 12y ago
She signed the patent royalties over to DuPont, but that is the deal that she made. There is at least an equal chance that she never would have created this material (there are scores of other men and women who have worked for DuPont, but not an equal number of such incredible breakthroughs). She traded away the ability to hit a home run for lower variance in compensation. She collected a salary, and I would hope that she indirectly financially benefited from potential promotions or raises. Also, without the resources of DuPont she never would have been able to create this material. It is a great invention, and she is certainly a great inventor; but just because she didn't become fabulously wealthy doesn't mean she was treated poorly.
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  > Also, without the resources of DuPont she never would have been able to create this material. Irrelevant. The need for capital doesn't inherently justify capital receiving ~100% of the proceeds. Her work was also a necessary part of creating the product. > She collected a salary, and I would hope that she indirectly financially benefited from potential promotions or raises. I don't think you understand how bad chemists have it. The guy who invented lipitor ($120 billion in revenue) was unceremoniously laid off from Pfizer for his trouble. He didn't get a penny on top of his salary -- a salary that half of the readers of this post probably wouldn't accept for a software development position. > just because she didn't become fabulously wealthy doesn't mean she was treated poorly No, but the labor force of industrial chemists is generally a heavily deleveraged group. There's an oversupply of them and they absolutely require intensive capital resources for success. That means they get systematically shafted at the bargaining table. They are treated poorly regardless of whether or not this individual incident is sufficient to prove it. Due to the fact that software development has tiny capital requirements and that there are many industrial positions available for software engineers, we are able to negotiate much more reasonable terms of employment (i.e. capture a comparatively respectable fraction of the value we create). We have it good. Unusually good. It's important to remember that this is not because markets operate that way in general. It's a happy accident that has turned out well for us so far. Nothing more, nothing less. The very least we can do is refrain from victim-blaming in industries where labor is not blessed with the same happy accident.

noja 12y ago

Ironically he was stabbed to death while wearing a kevlar vest.

clvrly 12y ago
That does not make sense.
taspeotis 12y ago
noja 4 hours ago | link | parent | flag Ironically he was stabbed to death while wearing a kevlar vest. You need to work on your reading comprehension: Stephanie L. Kwolek Stephanie L. Stephanie Stephanie is literally the first word in the title and article.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Both men and women are called "Stephanie", although in the US it is mostly a female name. http://www.babynames.it/boyname/Stephanie-meaning.htm http://www.babynames.it/boyname/Stephanie-meaning.htm The mistake was to assume a male. It doesn't matter what the name was.
  - taspeotis 12y ago
    That pages looks auto-generated and awfully spammy. Apparently Elizabeth is a boys name, too [1]. [1] http://www.babynames.it/boyname/Elizabeth-meaning.htm http://www.babynames.it/boyname/Elizabeth-meaning.htm
    - DanBC 12y ago
      Here's a less spammy site. http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/decades/names1890s.html http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/decades/names1890s.html I don't see what the problem is. "Elizabeth" is a boys name for a tiny number of boys. Both sites mention the tiny number and the old dates, clearly. (This is one of the things Google fails at, I think. "Stephanie" is unlikely to be a name for a man i. english speaking nations, but Google pretty much only returns me English results. Perhaps they need a switch to "allow whole world www results" rather than locking me out of all those other languages.

shrikant 12y ago

> A DuPont spokeswoman estimated that since the 1970s, 3,000 police officers have been saved from bullet wounds through the use of equipment reinforced with Kevlar [...] Does that number seem really low to anybody else?

hga 12y ago
Have you ever worn Kevlar body armor? The Feds have rather stupid requirements for it, that don't match the real world, but depend on deformation of clay behind a vest. So what cops wear is stiffer, and perhaps hotter than needed. Although I think heat is unavoidable, there's even relevant lines in Shakespeare's King Henry the Fourth: Like a rich armour worn in heat of day, That scalds with safety. So plenty of cops are killed because they're not wearing their uncomfortable armor; it's sort of like strapping a barrel around your torso. Another factor is that better, albeit more expensive polymers have been developed, especially very long chain polyethylene (as in 1-2 million units long); my next vest will be made from that. Also Kevlar loses its protective strength if wet. There was also a short period where a very bad new polymer was used by at least one company, it quickly degraded, and that cost a few cops their lives. Finally, while the gun-grabbers' campaign against non-existent "cop killer bullets!!!" accomplished nothing directly affecting cops on the ground, indirectly it taught a lot of people that cops wear body armor, resulting, or so I've read without personally drilling down to the raw data, an increase in criminals killing them with head shots. Ah, I should also note that soft body armor saves by preventing penetration, and decreases kinetic impact by stretching the fibers. So a hit can still hurt a lot, enough to potentially fatally distract you during a fight, especially bad if you're alone. My home defense body armor has a hard rifle plate in the front to mitigate this. Ah, I should also add some numbers. There aren't that many cops killed on duty, here's numbers broken down by years: http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/year.html http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/year.htm... I don't think Kevlar body armor went into common use until perhaps the '80s, and without adding heavy rifle plates, which only SWAT teams routinely use (and our troops in the last decade), it offers very little protection against the #1 killer of cops, vehicle related accidents (in them, or struck by them).
- reader5000 12y ago