Wallace Hume Carothers, born 1896, died 1937, was an American chemist who developed the synthetic material nylon, which was patented in 1937.  He had been lured away from his post at Harvard University in 1927 by Dupont by being promised a free hand in pure research.  Dupont was interested in producing other synthetics, after they had obtained the French technology for rayon, or artificial silk.  By the early 1930's, Carothers' research group had already produced neoprene, or artificial rubber.