7 Stephanie Kwolek 7Carnegie Mellon University), Pittsburgh, Penn. Intending
eventually to go to medical school, she went to work as a
laboratory chemist at the rayon department of the DuPont
Company in Buffalo, New York. DuPont had introduced
nylon just before World War II, and in the post war years
the company resumed its drive into the highly competi-
tive market of synthetic fibres. Kwolek thus became
engaged in basic research in a new and fast-growing field,
and as a consequence she never left employment with
DuPont. She moved with the company’s Pioneering
Research Laboratory to Wilmington, Del., in 1950 and
retired with the rank of research associate in 1986. Having
accumulated many patents and awards in her career, she
continued in retirement to work as a consultant and
public speaker.
Kwolek is best known for her work during the 1950s
and ’60s with aramids, or “aromatic polyamides,” a type of
polymer that can be made into strong, stiff, and flame-
resistant fibres. Her laboratory work in aramids was
conducted under the supervision of research fellow Paul
W. Morgan, who calculated that the aramids would form
stiff fibres owing to the presence of bulky benzene (or
“aromatic”) rings in their molecular chains but that they
would have to be prepared from solution because they
melt only at very high temperatures. Kwolek determined
the solvents and polymerization conditions suitable for
producing poly-m-phenylene isophthalamide, a compound
that DuPont released in 1961 as a flame-resistant fibre with
the trade name Nomex. She then extended her work into
poly-p-benzamide and poly-p-phenylene terephthalamide,
which she noted adopted highly regular rodlike molecular
arrangements in solution. From these two “liquid crystal
polymers” (the first ever prepared), fibres were spun that
displayed unprecedented stiffness and tensile strength. Poly-
p-phenylene terephthalamide was released commercially