The wealth of chemists / Review of 'Science and Corporate Strategy' by David A. Hounshell and John Kenly

22 July 1989

Science and Corporate Strategy by David A. Hounshell and John Kenly
Smith Jr CUP, pp 756, Pounds sterling 27.50

ONE OF the paradoxes of our age is the growing wealth of the chemical
industry and the shrinking number of chemists. How so few create so much,
is little short of miraculous. But then chemists have always been good at
working miracles, industrial chemists particularly so. When an American
explosives firm learnt how to turn sawdust into summer dresses, air into
ammunition and salt into sprays of scent, it grew and grew, until it became
the world’s largest chemical company, Du Pont. Science and Corporate Strategy
is a meticulous account of how it happened.

Du Pont arrived at its commanding position by hiring a group of keen
young chemists and letting them work on more or less what they wanted. It
took this step just before the worst economic recession the industrial world
had ever known, in the early 1930s. The gamble paid off, generating wealth
beyond their wildest dreams. Several golden eggs were laid, the most profitable
of which was nylon.

Wallace H. Carothers was the chemist who discovered nylon and he found
it because he chose to research into the rather obscure subject of polymerisation.
In the 1920s there was a debate among chemists: could chemicals react to
form long chains, or polymers? The debate was fiercest in Germany, where
the chemist, Hermann Staudinger, was publishing papers asserting that polymers
were giant molecules held together by exactly the same kinds of chemical
bonds that kept ordinary molecules together. This ran counter to the dogma
of the day that maintained polymers, such as the natural fibres cotton and
wool, were just aggregations of molecules.


Now we know Staudinger was right, but when Carothers moved to Du Pont
in 1928, his decision to investigate polymers was purely academic. In 1930
he and his colleague, Julian Hill, came within a polymer’s breadth of discovering
nylon, but the reaction they carried out did not go as planned, and so they
moved on to something else.

Four years later another colleague, Donald Coffman, tried again and
this time he had the pleasure of observing the first ever nylon fibre, which,
as he recorded in his lab notebook: ‘seemed to be fairly tough, not at all
brittle and could be cold drawn to give a lustrous filament’. Three years
later a patent was taken out on the miracle fibre, and on 27 October 1938
Du Pont announced nylon stockings at the New York World’s Fair. Sadly by
then Carothers was dead. He committed suicide by drinking cyanide.

Nylon was an immediate success. It was first marketed as a substitute
for silk hosiery, a sensible choice since only 10 grams are needed to knit
a pair of stockings. The benefits to the customer were equally obvious.
Nylon stockings looked like the most expensive silk, clung to the legs better
and lasted much longer.

‘Time-defying hosiery’ was the way The New York Times reported the discovery,
and rather cynically pondered whether women would really be happy with stockings
that would last. Of course, they were right. The stocking manufacturers
were not too happy with them either. The problem of longevity was soon solved
by the simple expedient of making them from cobweb-thin yarn. In this way
nylons became part of life and the weekly shopping bill.

Nylon was only one of the new chemicals with which Du Pont sought to
build the brave new world we know today. Other fibres were to follow in
the years after the Second World War: softer-than-wool Orlon, stretchable
Lycra, uncreasable Dacron. This last one was Du Pont’s version of polyethylene
terephthalate, the polyester that ICI patented as Terylene. Du Pont’s researchers
had in fact discovered this polymer first, but had not patented it, and
for a very good reason. As every chemist knows, esters are easily attacked
by water, so obviously a polymer made from them would fall apart in the
first wash. There are very few exceptions to this general rule, but Terylene
is one of them.

Not all Du Pont’s discoveries were so successful, even though some seemed
so at the time, and earned a lot of money. Tetraethyl lead, which is a superb
petrol booster, and CFCs, which made household fridges and aerosols so much
safer, are now seen as environmental catastrophes by some people. Other
discoveries failed to catch on, such as the synthetic leather Corfam. This
‘breathing’ plastic is better than leather for shoes, but it came to the
market at the wrong time in the 1960s. The Corfam plant was eventually closed
down and sold to Poland, where its benefits have been enjoyed ever since.

Science and Corporate Strategy is a title that gives little away about
the treasures it contains. David Hounshell and John Kenly Smith have written
and researched their book primarily about company policy, boardroom politics
and economic strategy. They have produced a major historical work. If you
are part of the management of any great chemical company or financial investment
house, then here there are hours of thrilling reading as you watch this
great company make lots of money in the 1940s and 1950s and almost lose
it all in the 1960s and 1970s. If you are a scientist, you can skip the
boring bits and enjoy the stories of the famous chemicals that kept the
economic roller coaster careering on its way.

By the late 1970s the morale of Du Pont’s researchers was at its lowest
ebb, and then something rather strange happened. In 1979 Dr Edward Jefferson
became head of the company. Now Jefferson was neither an accountant nor
even an American. He was a real chemist who got his PhD at King’s College
London. Frustratingly, Hounshell and Kenly Smith’s book stops at 1980, just
as the story gets interesting. However, I can reveal the happy ending: last
year Du Pont was still the top American chemical company with sales of $15
billion. That’s about three million dollars for every chemistry graduate
it employs. Never have so many owned so much because of so few.