Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
Wilmington, which he shared with three other DuPont scientists. He wrote to a
close friend: ''There does not seem to be much to report concerning my experi-
ences outside of chemistry. I'm living out in the country with three other bache-
lors, and they being socially inclined have all gone out in tall hats and white
collars, while I after my ancient custom sit sullenly at home.'' When he had to
present a talk outside DuPont he drank considerable amounts of alcohol before to
fight the nervousness. In 1933 and 1934 his psychic problems worsened. He
bought a house near Wilmington and moved to it with his parents. However, his
parents strongly criticized his affair with a divorced woman. Due to this permanent
stress under the same roof, his parents returned to De Moins, and Carothers had to
spend several months in a hospital for psychiatric treatment. After his return to the
laboratory he began to date Helen Sweetman, an employee of DuPont working on
patent applications. They married in February 1936 and several months later his
wife became pregnant. On April 30 1936, Carothers was elected to the National
Academy of Sciences, a very high honor. Carothers was the first industrial organic
chemist who received this honor. None-the-less, his depression worsened and
prevented him most of the year from working at the Experimental Station. His
psychiatrist, Dr. Appel, informed his friends about a high risk of suicide.
On January 8, 1937, Carothers's sister Isabel died of pneumonia, and he and his
wife traveled to Chicago and De Moins to attend her funeral and burial. He
returned to Philadelphia to consult again his psychiatrist. On April 28 he went to
the Experimental Station to work as usual. The following day he checked in at a
hotel in Philadelphia and committed suicide by drinking a solution of potassium
cyanide in lemon juice. It was a particular tragedy that he died before his daughter
was born and before the big success of his invention, Nylon-6,6, became evident.
Due to the dramatic increase of depressions after 1934 and his sudden death,
Carothers published little [
44
] about polyamides [
39
]. Yet, after his death DuPont
filed numerous patents with his name [
45
-
51
].
In almost all comments on Carothers life and work, the invention of nylons is
hailed as his biggest success. Another, perhaps even more important result is
ignored or underestimated. As mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, Stau-
dinger and many other (polymer) chemists of that time believed that the reactivity
of end groups strongly decreases with higher DPs of oligomers. With the syntheses
of superpolyesters by a more efficient removal of liberated water Carothers and
Hill unambiguously demonstrated that the progress of a polycondensation is not
limited by decreasing reactivity of the end groups. An important contribution to
this point came from P. J. Flory who became member of Carothers group in the
age of 24. He was mainly interested in theoretical aspects of step-growth poly-
merizations, and he analyzed both the kinetic course and the molar mass distri-
bution of the polyester syntheses. His analyses and calculations confirmed that the
reactivity of end groups does not decrease with increasing conversion and
increasing DPn: These results not only paved the way to the invention of Nylon-66
fibers, they paved the way for any successful step-growth polymerization. From
the viewpoint of the author this is the most important outcome of Carothers's
work.
