February 11th is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, a worldwide event that promotes gender equality in science. The Day was formally designated by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 to promote equal access to and participation in science, technology and innovation for women and girls of all ages.
At ENL Group, we thought that this year’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science was a great opportunity to celebrate the significant contribution that women have made to the modern plastics industry. We wanted to shine the spotlight on three of the female pioneers that have made a major contribution to modern plastics through their work.
Stephanie Kwolek
Stephanie Kwolek was born in Pennsylvania in 1923. She was planning to become a doctor, but in order to save the money needed for medical school she realised she needed a job. Kwolek took a research role with DuPont in 1946. This did not turn out to be the short-term job she imagined. In fact, it was the start of a career in chemistry and research that lasted for over four decades.
You may not have heard of Kwolek, but anyone who has seen a TV police series or a Hollywood action film will be familiar with her most famous invention. Her research led to the creation of Kevlar, which has been used to protect undersea cables and also to provide lightweight, bulletproof protection for police and the military.
Kwolek had always had a passion for fashion, so it is not surprising that her most famous invention turned out to be a fabric. The discovery came early in her career when she was researching super fibres that could be an alternative to steel in radial car tyres.
The material itself was actually invented almost by accident. An experiment designed to turn a solid polymer into liquid did not work as planned. When Kwolek took a closer look at the results, she discovered that the fibres within the liquid were five times stronger than steel. She quickly realised that these fibres were strong enough to work under the most extreme conditions.
Since then, Kevlar has been used in a range of ways – from firefighters’ boots to parts of the Space Shuttle. Most famously however, it is used as body armour. Since it was first introduced in the early 1970’s the material has been used to manufacture more than a million protective vests. These have been credited with saving thousands of lives.
Patsy O’Connell Sherman
Patsy O’Connell Sherman was born in 1930 in Minneapolis. In 1952 she became the first woman to gain a chemistry and mathematics degree from Gustavus Adolphus College in Minneapolis.
Her first job following graduation was with major chemical company 3M. She was asked to look at how fluorochemicals could be used to develop new fuel lines in jet engines used in the aerospace industry. Sherman realised that to achieve this would require a new type of rubber material that would not be adversely affected by jet fuel.
It was whilst researching this subject that Sherman discovered her most famous invention. As with Kwolek’s invention of Kevlar, there was a degree of happy accident about this discovery. Whilst working in the laboratory she accidentally spilled some of the chemicals she was working with onto her shoes.
Over time, she noticed that no matter how dirty her shoes became, that one spot where she had spilled chemicals remained clean. What Sherman had discovered became Scotchgard – a fluorochemical polymer capable of repelling oil and water from fabrics.
Scotchgard is still sold by 3M today, although the product has been reformulated to reduce the harmful environmental impact of the chemicals Sherman’s invention originally contained.
Sherman herself was admitted to the Minnesota Inventors’ Hall of Fame in 1989 and to the National Inventors’ Hall of Fame in 2001.
Mary Elliott Hill
Mary Elliott Hill, born in 1907, was one of the first African-American women to become a chemist.
She was born in the segregated small town of South Mills in North Carolina where there were significant barriers that disadvantaged her as an African American. But her flair for science saw her awarded a place at Virginia State College for Negroes, which went on to become Virginia State University. There she gained both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry. Indeed, Hill may have been the first African American woman to gain a masters in the subject anywhere in the United States.
Hill was both an organic and analytical chemist and her main research interest focused on the properties of ultraviolet light. However, she was also an early pioneer in the new science of plastics.
Working alongside her husband, Carl McClellan Hill, she did ground breaking work on ketene synthesis funded by the National Science Foundation and the US Air Force. Her focus was on what are known as ‘monomeric ketenes’ that can undergo polymerisation. This is a critical step in the creation of all plastics. Mary Hill was the person who developed analytical methods for the work, charting the progress of the team’s experiments and co-authoring over 40 research papers.
Supporting a Diverse Workforce
The involvement of the United Nations shows that the underrepresentation of girls and women in science remains a worldwide problem. It is also a problem within the UK. As we have written before, science and engineering are still areas where girls and women are significantly underrepresented. The fact that girls are less likely to select STEM subjects at school has a clear subsequent impact on their representation on higher education courses, and then in the workforce. This is a particular challenge for engineering. Currently on UK higher education engineering courses, women make up just 19% of all students.
Not only is this wrong, but it is also bad for UK manufacturing as a whole. We know that there is a growing skills crisis in the sector. STEM based industries such as our own cannot afford to only recruit from one half of the gene pool. Creating a more diverse workforce is in everyone’s interests.
At ENL we are committed to playing a full role in building a UK plastics industry workforce that better represents the diversity of society – both in terms of gender and ethnicity. That is why we believe it is important to celebrate the successes of those female pioneers whose work has helped shape the industry we operate in today.
About ENL Group
ENL Group is based in Portsmouth, UK and Veľké Kostoľany, Slovakia. Established in 1958, we have been servicing UK-based and European companies for decades. Working with a secure supply chain, ENL provides quality components for quality-driven customers – with full certification for all of our products and quality checking at every stage.
Operating 24/7, we design, manufacture and deliver critical components for our customers across the UK and Europe.
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