Inventor Stephanie Kwolek led DuPont to ‘Kevlar’

Stephanie Louise Kwolek earned her bachelor’s degree in 1946 from Margaret Morrison Carnegie College, the women’s college for Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa. She majored in chemistry. 

She planned to become a physician and hoped she could earn enough money from a temporary job in a chemistry-related field to attend medical school. 

She managed to get an interview after college graduation with DuPont’s research director Dr. W. Hale Charch. It went fairly well. She was assertive. 

He said she could expect to hear back from him in a few weeks. She became ultra-assertive. 

“With great boldness, I said to him, ‘I wonder if you could possibly tell me sooner because there is another company that wants me to decide whether I should come and work for them,’” Kwolek recalled. 

“He called in his secretary and he dictated the letter to me while I was sitting there, and offered me the job.” Kwolek accepted a position with the company and was assigned to DuPont’s research laboratory in Buffalo, N.Y. 

Dan Samorodnitsky, senior editor at Massive Science a digital scientific research media company, reported: “Kwolek intended to only work at DuPont temporarily, but found the work so interesting and challenging that she remained with the company for more than 40 years.”

 

So much for medical school. She found another way to make a difference and serve humanity, and she was transferred after a few years to DuPont’s flagship lab in Wilmington, Del. 

“Ten years into her permanent career as a chemist, Kwolek was cooking up synthetic fibers in search of a replacement for the steel used in tires,” Samorodnitsky wrote. “DuPont wanted something lighter to improve gas mileage. What Kwolek came up with was thin, opaque and milky.” 

“The result was astounding. What she had made was stiff, five times stronger than steel and resistant to fire.” Kwolek was timid about telling management, because “she was afraid the tests were wrong and she didn’t want to be embarrassed.” 

“When I did tell management, they didn’t fool around. They immediately assigned a whole group to work on different aspects (of the material),” she said. 

Samorodnitsky wrote: “That group eventually refined Kwolek’s work into Kevlar, a 1965 invention credited with saving thousands of lives and making DuPont billions of dollars.” 

Her invention is used primarily in bulletproof vests to protect lives military, law enforcement and first-responder personnel.

“I never in a thousand years expected that little liquid crystal to develop into what it did,” Kwolek said.

 She retired from DuPont in 1986, having attained 17 patents. She said the impact of her work, however, was her greatest reward. 

“When I look back on my career, I’m inspired most by the fact that I was fortunate enough to do something that would be of benefit to mankind. It’s been an extremely satisfying discovery. I don’t think there’s anything like saving someone’s life to bring you satisfaction and happiness.” 

Kwolek was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1995, and she viewed that as “one of the highest honors in the United States.” 

“I think there is a great need for recognition of scientists and other people who really do things that benefit society. Although sports bring great enjoyment, I don’t think the benefits derived in any way approach those gained from discoveries in medicine, chemistry or physics.” 

Stephanie Kwolek never married. She died at her home in Wilmington, Del., in 2014 at age of 90. 

She clearly earned a spot as one of the five “Lady Edisons” of American inventiveness.