C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

Noyes Laboratory:
One Hundred Years of Chemistry

A Century of Accomplishment
The Bare Facts
Nobel Prize Winners
ACS Presidents
Priestley Medal Winner

Fine Chemicals

The Illinois State Water Survey

Chemists and Chemistry at Noyes:
Roger Adams: "The Chief"
Ludwig F. Audrieth and Synthetic Sweeteners
John C. Bailar Jr. and Coordination Chemistry
St. Elmo Brady: Pioneer
George L. Clark and High-Intensity X-Ray Tubes
Willis H. Flygare and Microwave Spectrometry
Reynold C. Fuson: Teaching Chemistry
Herbert S. Gutowsky and NMR Spectroscopy
B. Smith Hopkins and the Chemistry of Rare Earths
Henry Fraser Johnstone and the Study of Air Pollution
Herbert A. Laitinen and Analytical Chemistry
Carl "Speed" Marvel: Advances in Polymer Chemistry
William A. Noyes: The Department Comes of Age
Arthur W. Palmer: The Early Years
Samuel W. Parr and Applied Chemistry
Charles C. Price III and Antimalarials
Worth H. Rodebush and Physical Chemistry
William C. Rose and Amino Acids
George F. Smith and the Aerosol Can
Harold R. Snyder and Antimalarials
Marion Sparks and Chemical Information

Landmark Designation

Carl Marvel was born on a farm and grew up expecting to be a farmer. He later said his uncle, a high school teacher, urged him to study science "because the next generation of farmers was going to need scientific knowledge to get the most out of their work." Accordingly, Marvel enrolled at Illinois Wesleyan University in 1911 and discovered he enjoyed synthesizing organic compounds.

In 1915 Marvel accepted a $250 scholarship to the University of Illinois to study chemistry, although he still planned to return to the family farm. The dean of the graduate school, unimpressed by Marvel’s transcript from Illinois Wesleyan, urged him to take an overload of courses in chemistry so he could catch up. Because of his apparent ability to work late in the laboratory, sleep until the last moment, and still get to breakfast before the dining hall closed at 7:30 a.m., Marvel earned the nickname "Speed," which he used throughout his career, even on official correspondence.

Marvel did his doctoral work under department head William Noyes and then stayed at Illinois, serving on the faculty for more than forty years. He worked with Roger Adams to make the organic chemistry program at Illinois preeminent in the United States. After he retired in 1961, Marvel went on to teach and do research at the University of Arizona for another seventeen years.

Marvel worked primarily on the structure and synthesis of polymers, and he has been recognized as the "father" of synthetic polymer chemistry. Marvel’s interest in polymers intensified when he became a consultant for DuPont in 1928, a relationship that lasted for about sixty years. In 1937 Marvel began to investigate the structure of vinyl polymers, proving that the repeating units in most polymers prepared from polyvinyl chloride are formed with chlorine atoms on alternate carbon atoms (head-to-tail), as Hermann Staudinger had suggested, and not on adjacent carbon atoms (head-to-head). This work led in turn to the preparation and polymerization of new monomers.

During World War II, Marvel headed a group of chemists working on the U.S. government’s synthetic rubber program, launched to ease the critical shortage of natural rubber needed for tires for airplanes, trucks, and military vehicles. Marvel helped coordinate the project involving many universities and industrial laboratories. Within a year the cooperative effort brought forth processes for synthetic rubber, providing a successful solution and helping to win the war.

In 1946 Marvel traveled to Germany as part of a technical intelligence team that investigated German efforts to develop a new polymerization process aimed at producing a better synthetic rubber by operating at 5° C instead of at 70° C as in the older process. Marvel’s group took up this research and developed the cold rubber process.

In the 1950s high temperature-resistant synthetic materials became important in the space program and Marvel, in synthesizing these polymers, developed cyclopolymerization. In the next decade Marvel synthesized polymers with repeating benzimidazole units, PBI’s, which were heat-resistant macromolecules of high molecular weight. In 1980 PBI became the first man-made fiber to be produced commercially in nearly a decade. PBI is now used as a substitute for fiberglass and asbestos (which causes health problems), and it is used in suits for astronauts and fire fighters because of its exceptional resistance to fire.

Marvel was active in the American Chemical Society, serving as president in 1945. He received the Society’s Priestley Medal in 1956, and he was founder of the High Polymer Forum that became the Division of Polymer Chemistry, which he chaired in 1950-1951. The Carl Shipp Marvel Laboratories of Chemistry at the University of Arizona and Marvel Hall at the ACS headquarters in Washington, D.C., were named in his honor.

Copyright ©2007 American Chemical Society. All Rights Reserved. 1155 16th Street NW, Washington DC 20036
202-872-4600, 800-227-5558