1896
Birth† 29/4/1937
Wallace Hume Carothers
Wallace Hume Carothers (born April 27, 1896, and died April 29, 1937) was a brilliant American chemist. As research leader at DuPont, he developed neoprene (the first successful synthetic rubber) and invented nylon in 1935, laying the structural foundations of the entire modern synthetic fiber industry.