In the polymer research he carried out, Wallace Carothers (see p. 24) narrowly missed being able to take credit for two other polymers that went on to become vital man-made macromolecules. One of these was nylon 6 (see ChemistryReviewOnline), the other was poly(ethylene terephthalate).
In the early research on polyesters, when his team was experimenting with dicarboxylic acids and diols, the polyester called poly(ethylene terephthalate), now more familiarly known as PET (see CHEMISTRY REVIEW, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 2–5), somehow went unnoticed.
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