Stephanie L. Kwolek, Inventor of Kevlar, Is Dead at 90
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Re: Stephanie L. Kwolek, Inventor of Kevlar, Is Dead at 90
#2I would not be around mucking with code today if not for this woman's work. May she rest in peace.
Re: Stephanie L. Kwolek, Inventor of Kevlar, Is Dead at 90
#3great 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.
Re: Stephanie L. Kwolek, Inventor of Kevlar, Is Dead at 90
#4I would not be around mucking with code today if not for this woman's work. May she rest in peace.
That sounds like an interesting story; would you consider telling it?
Re: Stephanie L. Kwolek, Inventor of Kevlar, Is Dead at 90
#5I have always put Stephanie Kwolek on my "long odds but beyond deserving" list for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Alas, she never won it.
Re: Stephanie L. Kwolek, Inventor of Kevlar, Is Dead at 90
#6> 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 http://www.out-law.com/page-5208)
Re: Stephanie L. Kwolek, Inventor of Kevlar, Is Dead at 90
#7Ironically he was stabbed to death while wearing a kevlar vest.
Re: Stephanie L. Kwolek, Inventor of Kevlar, Is Dead at 90
#8Ironically he was stabbed to death while wearing a kevlar vest.
That does not make sense.
Re: Stephanie L. Kwolek, Inventor of Kevlar, Is Dead at 90
#9> 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?
Re: Stephanie L. Kwolek, Inventor of Kevlar, Is Dead at 90
#10> 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 creat…
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.
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