Paul Flory

In 1936 he married Emily Catherine Tabor and the couple was blessed with three children two daughters, Susan Flory Springer and Melinda Flory Groom and son John Flory, Jr. All his children pursued science and his son went on to become a geneticist.

On September 9, 1985, he succumbed to heart attack in his weekend home in Big Sur, California, at the age of 75.

He was born on June 19, 1910, in Sterling, Illinois. His father, Exra Flory was a clergyman-educator while his mother, Martha Brumbaugh Flory was a school teacher. He had two step-sisters, Margaret and Miriam, and one younger brother James.

He studied at ‘Elgin High School’ in Elgin, Illinois from where he completed his graduation in 1927.

Thereafter he enrolled at ‘Manchester College’ (presently ‘Manchester University’), a Brethren liberal arts college in North Manchester, from where he earned a BS in Chemistry in 1931. It is here that his interest in science, especially chemistry was infused by an exceptional professor, Carl W. Holl.

Encouraged by professor Holl, he applied and got enrolled at the Graduate School of ‘Ohio State University’ located at Columbus, Ohio. The chemistry department of the school was among the largest in the US. Here he developed immense interest in physical chemistry.

In 1934 he earned a PhD in Physical Chemistry from ‘Ohio State University’ submitting thesis on photochemistry of nitric oxide, which he carried out under supervision of Professor Herrick L. Johnston.

After completing his PhD, Flory joined ‘Central Research Department’ of ‘E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company’ in 1934. There he worked as a research chemist in a small team under Wallace Hume Carothers, an American chemist who invented nylon and neoprene. His curiosity regarding basics of polymerization and polymeric substances were aroused here following his association with Dr. Carothers.

Flory was designated to examine physical chemistry of polymers. He worked in the field of polymerization kinetics that is studying reaction rates of chemical processes in polymerization.

Regarding condensation polymerization, a type of step-growth polymerization, he disputed with the postulation that with growth of macromolecule, the reactivity of the end group deceases. He argued that reactivity of end group was independent of size of macromolecule and deduced that the number of chains present decrease exponentially with size.

Flory introduced the significant perception of ‘chain transfer’ (a polymerization reaction that results in transfer of the activity of a growing polymer chain to another molecule) in addition to polymerization for improvement of the kinetic equations and for better comprehension of polymer size distribution.

Following Dr. Carothers’s death in 1937, Flory started working at the ‘Basic Science Research Laboratory’ at the ‘University of Cincinnati’ from 1938. While serving there for two years he developed the theory of polymer networks to elucidate the method of gelation. During that tenure he also developed a mathematical theory for polymerization of those compounds that consist of more than two functional groups.

His work in the field of polymers won him the ‘Nobel Prize in Chemistry’ in 1974.