Stephanie Kwolek, inventor of Kevlar, dies at 90

Stephanie Kwolek, the DuPont Co. scientist whose research on polymers in the 1960s led to the creation of Kevlar, the light, super-strong synthetic fabric used in bulletproof vests and body armor credited with saving thousands of lives, has died. She was 90.

Kwolek died Wednesday (June 18, 2014) under hospice care at St. Francis Hospital in Wilmington, Del., according to a DuPont spokesman. The cause was not given; a Catholic funeral Mass is scheduled June 28.

During an achievement-laden career as a chemist at DuPont, Kwolek made her greatest mark with her 1965 work on a liquid crystal polymer that, dissolved in solvent and pressed through a device resembling a very fine colander, became a fiber five times stronger than steel, ounce for ounce.

Patented as Kevlar, it found many industrial applications, most notably protecting soldiers and police officers from bullets and shrapnel. In the 1970s, it was adopted as the preferred material in bullet-resistant vests, replacing earlier alternatives such as nylon, fiberglass and boron carbide. The lives of more than 3,000 U.S. law-enforcement officers have been saved by vests and other body armor since the mid-1970s, according to the National Institute of Justice in Washington.

“Not in a thousand years did I think the discovery of this liquid solution would save thousands of lives,” Kwolek said in 2003, according to USA Today.

Referring to the widespread use of Kevlar vests and helmets by U.S. forces in Iraq, she added, “When I watch the war on TV, I take great pride in saying, ‘We at DuPont invented that.'”

In a 1998 oral-history interview with the Chemical Heritage Foundation, Kwolek recalled the process that led to the breakthrough.

By 1964, she said, the DuPont lab “had made hundreds of polymers” — materials including nylon and spandex — “and had devised many new ways of making polymers, but there was still one block.” That was the lack of a breakthrough on so-called para-aramids, a type of polymer with rigid, rod-type molecules.

After six months of experimenting with solvents on two of the polymers, she came up with an “extremely odd” chemical solution, one that was watery and cloudy rather than the typical viscous and transparent. She said she had to persuade the worker in charge of the lab’s spinneret to give it a try.

“It formed very strong fibers and the stiffness was absolutely spectacular,” Kwolek recalled in a 1999 interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “That’s when I said ‘Aha.’ I knew then and there it was an important discovery.”

The next challenge for DuPont was the material’s commercial application. For almost 15 years after the discovery, DuPont spent $500 million to develop the product, which it called “Fiber B.”

The initial idea was that Kevlar would replace heavier steel in radial tires, making cars more fuel-efficient. A 1974 New York Times article headlined “Kevlar Enters Spotlight as New Miracle Fiber'” mentioned that and other potential uses, such as mooring offshore oil platforms and strengthening yacht sails. – Los Angeles Times, read on