Francis Irenee du Pont was an American chemist, inventor, and businessman. He was director of the Du Pont Company Experimental Station.
Background
Francis Irenee Du Pont was born on December 3, 1873, at Hagley House near Wilmington, Delaware, the eldest of ten children of Elise Wigfall (Simons) and Francis Gurney Du Pont, and a great-grandson of Eleuthere Irenee Du Pont, founder of E. I Du Pont de Nemours and Company. His father was manager of the company's black powder mills on Brandywine Creek.
Education
Francis at an early age constructed models of mills, waterwheels, and machinery, a talent fostered by his father, who made a workroom for him in their home. Educated by his parents, by tutors, and at Martin's Day School in Philadelphia, he entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1890, but soon withdrew because of an eye injury suffered in a laboratory accident. For the next two years he remained at home, studying with his father and private tutors. He then enrolled in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale. There he experimented with the chemical components of smokeless powder, encouraged by his father, who was encountering problems in the production of this new type of explosive at the company's recently established plant in Carney's Point, New Jersey. He graduated from Yale in 1895.
Career
After graduating, Francis Du Pont went to work at Carney's Point, where he taught technicians who were inexperienced in chemistry how to make daily tests and analyses at various stages in the powder-making process.
When in 1902 his cousins Alfred Irenee Du Pont, Thomas Coleman Du Pont, and Pierre Samuel Du Pont acquired control of the Du Pont Company, Francis was made a member of the board of directors and superintendent of the Carney's Point plant. Within a year he left the plant to establish an experimental laboratory in a small converted cotton mill on Brandywine Creek. From this grew the Du Pont Company Experimental Station, which he directed until 1916.
Though an able administrator, Du Pont preferred research, and his emphasis on research and development, in association with Charles Lee Reese and others, moved the Du Pont Company in the direction of diversification as a manufacturer of artificial leather, paints, lacquers, dyes, photographic film, plastics, chemicals, and improved explosives. He invented a fixation process that converted inert nitrogen, an abundant component of air, into chemically active oxides that could be made into compounds having industrial uses. The process involved heating air to a high temperature by an electric arc, then rapidly, almost simultaneously, cooling it, after which the oxides were converted into nitric acid.
After improving a German catalytic process for the manufacture of sulfuric acid, he succeeded in making sulfuric acid readily absorb gaseous nitric acid, thereby creating the mixed acid essential for making nitrocellulose. He also developed a gravity liquid process for separating different types of mineral solids. Additional patents for an improved draftsman's triangle and for putting tips on shoelaces may have been born out of dissatisfaction and exasperation with these simple but essential everyday items.
Du Pont withdrew from the family firm in 1916, when his cousin Alfred I Du Pont, with whom he was aligned, failed to block the sale of T. Coleman du Pont's stock to a group headed by Pierre S. du Pont.
With his brother Ernest, Francis Du Pont then organized the Ball Grain Explosives Company, which made powder by a "wet mix" process, and in 1919 they established a second explosives company, the Flashless Powder Company. Du Pont then became absorbed in another firm that he had founded, the Delaware Chemical Engineering Company, which under his direction undertook a wide range of research and development in chemistry and engineering.
In 1931 he embarked upon a new business career when he purchased a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, initially to handle his own stock transactions and eliminate brokers' commissions. Thereafter he divided his time between Francis I Du Pont and Company in New York City, which became one of the country's leading brokerage firms, and the Delaware Chemical Engineering Company in Wilmington, where he made a number of improvements and inventions in the fields of petrochemicals and synthetic rubber. In 1936 he organized still another company, the Wilmington Chemical Corporation, for the development of a cheaper and simpler method of making plasticizers or extenders from petroleum wastes.
Widely read in political economy, Du Pont was a supporter of the single-tax theory of Henry George; in 1900 he aided in founding the single-tax community of Arden near Wilmington. As an advocate of the direct ballot and the initiative and referendum, he ran unsuccessfully in 1912 on the Progressive ticket for mayor of Wilmington.
Du Pont died at the West Side Hospital in New York City at the age of sixty-eight from a blood infection, streptococcus viridans. He was buried in the du Pont family burial ground, a short distance from his birthplace.
Achievements
Religion
Francis Du Pont was a member of the Episcopal Church but a less active communicant than his father had been.
Personality
Quiet and introspective, Francis sometimes appeared diffident and aloof.
Connections
On September 1, 1897, Francis Du Pont married Marianna Rhett of Charleston, South Carolina, by whom he had nine children: Emile Francis, Hubert Irenee, Elise, Francis, Edmond, Alfred Rhett, Alexis Irenee, Marianna Rhett, and Marie Delphine. His wife tactfully tolerated his disregard for the social amenities when at times he disappeared from dinner parties, later to be found in his private cellar laboratory working on a solution that had come as a sudden inspiration.