Wallace Carothers discovered nylon.
Before Carothers came on the scene, the U.S. was plagued by trade problems with Japan that were making silk. Then, in the early 1930s, Carothers and his team at the DuPont chemical company produced their first durable and flexible strand of a synthetic polymer fiber. DuPont patented the thread as "nylon" in 1935, and Carothers became the first organic chemist to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences.