By the time he was forty, Wallace Hume Carothers had made significant contributions to the field of organic chemistry. Heading a research team at the Du Pont Company in Wilmington, Delaware, Carothers, in the late 1920s and 1930s, framed a general theory for the behavior and synthesis of polymers, huge chainlike molecules that indefinitely repeat the same structure. Two years after Carothers's death, Du Pont began mass production of a polymer he invented--nylon . This and Carothers's other well-known creation, synthetic rubber , laid the foundation for two industries. In recognition of his services, Du Pont in 1946 named its new laboratory for synthetic fibers research the Carothers Research Laboratory.

Carothers was born on April 27, 1896, in Burlington, Iowa. His father, Ira Hume Carothers, was descended from Scottish farmers and artisans who had settled in Pennsylvania before the American Revolution. Born on an Illinois farm in 1869, Ira Carothers began teaching country school...