By Sneha Rajaram
[metaslider id=9177]
By Sneha Rajaram
How many action sequences have you watched where you think someone has just been shot dead, but then they open their eyes and it turns out they were wearing a bullet-proof vest?
Let’s forget Frodo Baggins wearing chain mail made of mithril for a moment. This superbly irritating plot device wouldn’t even be in a screenwriter’s repertoire if not for Stephanie Kwolek (1923-2014), inventor of Kevlar, that amazing bullet-bouncing material.
Kwolek started working as a chemist at the DuPont chemical company in 1946, initially in order to earn enough money to start medical school. But she liked the work, so she still found herself at DuPont in 1964, when her team was working on inventing a light but strong synthetic fibre for automobile tyres. But inventing is one of those things where you ask for one thing and get another (not that I know this firsthand, unless you count cooking). That’s how Kwolek stumbled upon a synthetic fibre that is stronger than nylon, stronger than steel even.
In Kwolek’s own words:
I didn’t shout “Eureka!” but I was very excited, as was the whole laboratory excited, and management was excited, because we were looking for something new. Something different. And this was it.
“I didn’t shout ‘Eureka’” says it all. Quietly excited. That’s Kwolek.
But that’s not all. As a human being, Kwolek seems to have had one of the best Zen attitudes ever. Rather than resenting her invention, and its patent, being swallowed up by DuPont, so that she never profited from it financially, or the fact that she never got to work on Kevlar after she made that discovery, she’s actually grateful for the chance to have invented it:
I hope I’m saving lives. There are very few people in their careers that have the opportunity to do something to benefit mankind.
Plus, she had a natural talent for getting along with the public, the kind that’s very hard to acquire if you’re not born with it. DuPont couldn’t have had better PR. She became an icon for children who were interested in science, for instance. She gave lectures at schools, received “phone calls from all over the country, from students seeking help with homework”, and still manages to speak fondly of children – now that’s an overachiever for you. As she told Philly.Com:
“Even in my neighborhood, the kids come to me for interviews for their term papers,” she said with a chuckle. “I ask them later what grades they got, and they’re always A-pluses.”
She walked a fine line, playing neither the manic celebrity nor the overwhelmed recluse. People whose lives were saved by Kevlar vests often contacted her:
“Not long ago, I got to meet some troopers whose lives had been saved,” Kwolek says. “They came with their wives, their children, their parents. It was a very moving occasion.”
If you have dozens and dozens of people coming up to you and saying you saved their lives, and you know there are many, many more out there, how do you process it? How do you not acquire delusions of grandeur or, alternatively, become overwhelmed? But our Kwolek ain’t no “shaken, not stirred” woman. She’s moved; no less, no more. Show’s over, folks! Move along. Go invent something.