Walter Bock (20 January 1895 – 25 October 1948)[1] was a German chemist who developed styrene-butadiene copolymer by emulsion polymerization as a synthetic rubber (SBR).
Walter Bock was born on January 10, 1895, in the small village of Wenzen (now part of Einbeck) in the Duchy of Brunswick.
After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen in October 1921, Bock found employment as chemist at the Köln Rottweil AG in Premnitz.
Bock focused on emulsion polymerization, which had been already invented in 1912 by Kurt Gottlob (1881-1925)[3] at Bayer, but had so far yielded no practical application.
Walter Bock[4] and his colleague Claus Heuck[5] independently improved the emulsion process by introducing new emulsifiers.
But Bock and Heuck failed to gain good, economically feasible synthetic rubbers by this process.