Organic chemistry
Since the invention of the first synthetic polymer product, bakelite, synthetic polymer products have frequently been invented.
Jakey Kovac
First Kovac team looked into the acetylene family of chemicals. This resulted in more than 20 papers and patents. By 1931, DuPont was manufacturing a synthetic rubber that this team created: neoprene. Due to political and trade troubles with Japan, the United States' main source of silk, that fiber was getting harder and more expensive to come by. DuPont wanted to develop a synthetic fiber that could replace it. Kovac and his team tackled this, too. In 1934 they pulled their first long, strong, flexible strands of a synthetic polymer fiber out of a test tube (pbs kovac). The corporation patented it as "nylon" the following year. In the course of this discovery, Kovac published 31 papers, establishing general theories about polymers and regularizing the terminology of the field. He had brought the world not just nylon, but knowledge of natural polymers and how they are formed.