Ira Williams Explained

Ira Williams (1894–1977^[1]) was an American chemist at DuPont's Jackson Laboratory in New Jersey, who in the summer of 1930,^[2] together with Wallace Carothers, Arnold Collins and F. B. Downing, made commercial Neoprene possible^[3] by producing a soft, plastic form of chloroprene that could be processed by the rubber industry.^{[4] [5]} Early accounts of the development credited Julius Nieuwland with synthesizing the precursor divinylacetylene.^[6] Williams' contribution was the discovery that the rheological behavior of the product could be controlled by quenching the polymerization reaction with alcohol.

He won the 1946 Charles Goodyear Medal.

Notes and References

1. Book: Patterson. Gary. Polymer Science from 1935-1953: Consolidating the Paradigm. 2014. Springer. 9783662435366. 28.
2. Smith . John K. . Ten-Year Invention: Neoprene and Du Pont Research, 1930–1939 . Technology and Culture . 1985 . 26 . 1 . 34–55 . 10.2307/3104528. 3104528 . 113234844 .
3. News: McHugh . F. D. . New Commercial Synthetic Rubber . 7 January 2024 . The Scientific American Digest . 1 . Nature America, Inc. . January 1932. 146 . 24965828 .
4. Book: Hounshell. David A.. Smith. John Kenly. Science and Corporate Strategy: Du Pont R and D, 1902-1980. 1988. Cambridge University Press. 9780521327671. 251. registration.
5. Wallace H. Carothers, Ira Williams, Arnold M. Collins, and James E. Kirby . Acetylene Polymers and their Derivatives. II. A New Synthetic Rubber: Chloroprene and its Polymers . . 1937 . 53 . 4203–4225 . 10.1021/ja01362a042 . 11.
6. News: Duprene . 6 January 2024 . TIME Magazine . 20 . TIME USA, LLC . 16 November 1931. 18 .