Roy J. Plunkett

Roy J. Plunkett (1910 to 1994) was an American chemist who discovered Teflon at the DuPont Company's Jackson Laboratory in 1938. A poor Ohio farm boy during the Depression, he studied at Manchester College in Indiana and took a doctorate at Ohio State University before joining DuPont, where he spent his whole career. While researching chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants he found that stored cylinders of tetrafluoroethylene gas had polymerized into a white, heat resistant, chemically inert powder with very low surface friction, and he recognized that the substance was new. It was later named Teflon, and he received Philadelphia's Scott Medal for the discovery in 1951.