Awards & Winners

Carl Shipp Marvel

Date of Birth 11-September-1894
Place of Birth Waynesville
(De Witt County, Illinois, United States of America)
Nationality United States of America
Profession Chemist
Carl Shipp "Speed" Marvel was an American polymer chemist who worked at developing polybenzimidazoles, which are temperature-resistant polymers that are used in the aerospace industry and as a replacement for asbestos. He graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1915, and was a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon. He obtained the nickname "Speed" early on in his career as a chemist from his habit of rushing to breakfast after studying all night when he was a graduate student at the University of Illinois. However, his studies were interrupted by World War I and during the war he worked under Roger Adams in a lab set up at the university to make fine chemicals that had, until then, been imported from Germany, which at the time was the centre of fine chemical production. He was initiated into Alpha Chi Sigma at the Zeta Chapter, University of Illinois, in 1918. Also at this time Marvel became a close associate of Wallace Carothers, who was a fellow student at Illinois, and whom he later worked with as a consultant for DuPont when Carothers was carrying out his groundbreaking work on nylon and step-growth polymerization. He was a consultant for DuPont Central Research for over fifty years.

Awards by Carl Shipp Marvel

Check all the awards nominated and won by Carl Shipp Marvel.

1986


National Medal of Science for Chemistry
(For leading us into the Polymer Age through his researches on polymers, including synthetic rubber; for helping us into the Space Age through his development of thermally stable polymers; for his many services to the chemical profession; and for educating and inspiring three generations of chemists.)