Roy J. Plunkett

He received his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1936 from Ohio State University for his work on The Mechanism of Carbohydrate Oxidation.

du Pont de Nemours and Company at its Jackson Laboratory in Deepwater, New Jersey.

[1] In 1938, while attempting to make a new chlorofluorocarbon refrigerant, Plunkett's laboratory team discovered polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), better known as Teflon.

Hi story was published in the Symposium Proceedings:[6] On the morning of April 6, 1938, Jack Rebok, my assistant, selected one of the TFE cylinders that we had been using the previous day and set up the apparatus ready to go.

When we did, we found more of the powder packed onto the bottom and lower sides of the cylinder.The tetrafluoroethylene in the container had polymerized into polytetrafluoroethylene, a waxy solid with that was found to have had properties such as resistance to corrosion, low surface friction, and high heat resistance.

[7] In 1951, Plunkett received the John Scott Medal from the city of Philadelphia[7] for an invention promoting the "comfort, welfare, and happiness of humankind".