20 years ago, Stephanie Kwolek became only the fourth woman to enter the US National Inventors Hall of Fame, 30 years after she first synthesised a material for the purpose of making strong but light tyres.
That material is now used in more than 200 different applications. It protects undersea optical cables, suspends bridges with ultra-strong ropes and creates super-taut drumheads. But Kevlar is perhaps best known for saving countless lives as a protective material in bulletproof vests and helmets.
Kwolek, a chemist at American company DuPont, created a solution of para-phenylenediamine and terephthaloyl chloride in 1965 that was ‘cloudy, opalescent upon being stirred and of low viscosity’. Polymer solutions are normally syrupy, but Kwolek’s was thin and watery.
DuPont technician Charles Smullen refused to run the solution through a spinneret, the apparatus used to spin a polymer solution into a fibre, saying it was too watery and interpreting the opalescence as particles that would clog the machine. Thankfully, Kwolek was persistent, and Smullen agreed to spin the fibre.
‘We spun it, and it span beautifully,’ Kwolek beamed in a 2012 interview. ‘It was very strong and stiff – unlike anything we had made before. I knew that I had made a discovery. I didn’t shout “Eureka!” but I was very excited, as was the whole laboratory excited, and management was excited, because we were looking for something new. Something different. And this was it.’
The high tensile strength-to-weight ratio of Kevlar is five times that of steel. When layered together, it can absorb the velocity of shrapnel or a bullet, distributing its force across the fibres instead of being pierced. It is used in tennis rackets, skis, boats, ropes and cables and, as first intended, in tyres.
Kwolek, who also developed the nylon rope trick classroom demonstration, died in 2014 at the age of 90, having lived to see her invention take more forms than she could have possibly anticipated. Kwolek’s was a rare discovery with perhaps the most rewarding property a material can possess. As she put it, ‘I don’t think there’s anything like saving someone’s life to bring you satisfaction and happiness.’
When Dr. Wesley Memeger Jr. started at DuPont in 1964, he was only the fourth African American with a doctorate in chemistry to join the company.
Over the course of a thirty-two-year career, Memeger amassed fourteen patents and left his mark on some of DuPont’s most famous products, like Kevlar, the synthetic fiber found in bulletproof vests. His passion for chemistry has also influenced his career as an artist; Memeger’s pieces often explore geometrical themes reminiscent of molecular models.
On February 24, Hagley Library, in partnership with Clark Atlanta University and Bloomfield College, premiered Dr. Wesley Memeger, Jr., Science Into Art, a special documentary chronicling the life of Dr. Wesley Memeger, Jr. Now, we’re please to announce the debut of a digital exhibit to accompany that work.
The exhibit, Dr. Wesley Memeger Jr.: Scientist, Artist, Activist, covers key points of Memeger’s life story and makes use of archival photographs as well as clips from an oral history of Dr. Memeger conducted by Dr. Jeanne Nutter in 2020, which also served as the primary source for the documentary. Visitors to the exhibit can listen as Memeger recounts his journey, beginning as the son and grandson of farmers in St. Augustine, Florida during the era of Jim Crow laws, following his interest in science to Clark College, a historically Black university in Atlanta, at the height of the movement for Black civil rights, to his career at DuPont and his intriguing transition from scientist to artist.
We’re excited to announce that tonight, February 24, Hagley, in partnership with Clark Atlanta University and Bloomfield College, will be premiering Dr. Wesley Memeger, Jr., Science Into Art, a special documentary chronicling the life of Dr. Wesley Memeger, Jr.
Memeger was a long-time DuPont chemist at the Pioneering Research Laboratory. He began working for DuPont’s Pioneering Research Laboratory in 1964 and continued his career there until his retirement in 1997. His research enabled the company to streamline the production of Kevlar, a synthetic fiber developed at DuPont by Stephanie Kwolek in 1965, by discovering a faster polymerization process to help scale for industrial production. Memeger and his wife, a fiber artist, are also accomplished artists, with Memeger’s work taking inspiration from the geometric shapes found in molecular compounds.
The 40-minute documentary covers Memeger’s career and his own personal history. He discusses his childhood as son and grandson of farmers in St. Augustine during the Jim Crow era, the role of his two African American chemistry professors at Clark College, an HBCU, in contributing to his success as a scientist, and addresses the challenges of being a one of the DuPont’s company’s first Black scientists with a doctorate in chemistry during the civil rights era. His reflections on his remarkable career are the first of what Hagley hopes will be a number of oral history interviews with Black pioneers in the STEM professions in the Delaware area.
The documentary will premiere on YouTube at 7 p.m. EST on our YouTube channelandon this website on February 24 and will be hosted by Dr. Jeanne Nutter, Professor of Media Communications at Bloomfield College and an award-winning oral historian. We hope you can join us to celebrate Memeger’s many accomplishments spanning his career at DuPont.
