Stephanie Kwolek’s Kevlar

Stephanie Kwolek’s Kevlar

My first-hand knowledge on Kevlar was in a store in London way back in September 2008 when I had purchased a pair of gloves for a friend whom I had met in July the same year at Ladakh, a place of snow and sand-dune where winter temperature plummets to even -35°C. I had to hunt for no other brands except Kevlar gloves and it was much later that I realized why it was only Kevlar and no other material.

A lightweight, rust-free and non-corroding, super-strong and super stiff, heat resistant synthetic fiber, Kevlar is all about strength and durability. Believe it or not, the fiber is five times as strong as steel.

The lady behind the scene who accidentally discovered Kevlar is Stephanie Kwolek, a living alchemist. She was born in New Kensington, PA in 1923. Young Kwolek had a strong desire to pursue a degree in medicine. Her interest in science kept her hooked in order to earn a degree in a scientific discipline. However, fate had some other plans. She landed up studying chemistry instead due to financial constraints at home since her father expired when she was only 10 years old.

She graduated from Margaret Morrison Carnegie College (now Carnegie Mellon University) with a B.Sc. in Chemistry in 1946. Technical fields for women post World Wars were very few and far between. She joined DuPont, a leading company in the domain of chemicals of that period. At DuPont, she with her team of chemists (called Pioneering Research Laboratory) tested, experimented and explored on new *polymer (Plastics are made up of long chains called *polymers obtained by the inter linkage of certain specific molecules of same chemical composition).

In 1964, the team set on a search for a new high performance fiber for car tires to reduce gas consumption (fueled by predictions about gasoline shortage). When the thin, cloudy polymer solution was spun through the holes of a spinneret, the stiff and strong fiber which came out of the holes of the device was Kevlar. Initially Kwolek wasn’t sure and confident about the end-product of the fiber assuming that someone must have made some mistake in the process. Only when the same result came back from the lab to test the fiber’s strength, stiffness and such other properties, did she divulge her results. Finally Kevlar (or "Wholly aromatic carbocyclic polycarbonate fibers") was introduced in 1971 after some refinement by DuPont. It was patented by Kwolek in 1966.

"I discovered over the years that I seem to see things that other people did not see," Kwolek explains. "If things don't work out I don't just throw them out, I struggle over them, to try and see if there's something there."

A few noteworthy applications of Kevlar includes underwater cables, tires, brake pads, bridges, boats, protective gloves, helmets, boots, skis, building materials, parachutes and even spacecrafts. The most widely usage of Kevlar is in bullet-proof vests wherein several layers of a fabric are woven from Kevlar fiber. Thousands of precious human lives have been saved owing to Kevlar. Hence, it is a panacea especially for the armed forces.

Even though Kwolek retired from DuPont in 1986, she is a member of the American Chemical Society. She has three honorary degrees and has received the USPTO’s American Innovator Award in 1995 and the Perkin Medal in 1997. She has also been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1995. She has 17 US patents to her credit. She is a recipient of the 1999 Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award for her innovations in the polymers industry and for her invention of Kevlar®.