Wallace Hume Carothers

Wallace Discovering Nylon (http://encarta.msn.com/media_461546953/Discovery_of_Nylon.html)

My hero is Wallace Hume Carothers. He was an inventor. He was born on April 27, 1896 in Iowa and died on April 29, 1937. He lived to be forty-one. Wallace Carothers first studied accounting and later studied science at Tarkio College in Missouri. Wallace Carothers became the head of the chemistry department before he even gradulated. Wallace Carothers was highly talented in chemistry. He received both a Master's degree and PhD from the University of Illinois and then became a professor at Harvard, where he started his research into chemical structures of polymers in 1924.

My hero, Wallace Hume Carothers, is mostly know as the inventor of nylon. Wallace made this material in response to the breaking down of the trade rate between the U.S. and Japan, which was the leading source of silk to the United States. Nylon was first commercially used in toothbrush bristles but later was used to make other items such as panty hose. Carothers's work also led others to develop the first successful synthetic rubber, neoprene.

This man is important to me because he never gave up on what he loved, which is also my mind set. He also showed us no matter how down we get, there's always a way out and he never gave up. When japan slowed down the trading of silk to the U.S., he worked hard day and night to help solve this problem. Carothers is one of the few people that puts others problems and needs before his.