Background

Paul Flory was born in Sterling, Illinois, United States on June 19, 1910. He was a son of Ezra and Martha Flory.

Education

After graduating from Elgin High School in Elgin, Illinois in 1927, Flory received a bachelor's degree from Manchester College (Indiana) (now Manchester University) in 1931 and a Ph.D. from the Ohio State University in 1934.

Career

Flory's first position was as a research chemist at DuPont Corporation in 1934. He became a research associate at the Basic Science Research Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati in 1938. Since 1938, he also worked as a research chemist at Esso (now Exxon) Laboratories, Standard Oil Development Company. He worked there till 1943 and then went to Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio, where he became a research team leader.

Since 1948, Paul started working as a chemistry instructor at Cornell University, and since 1957, he was an executive director of Mellon Institute of Industrial Research in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He accepted a professorship at Stanford University in 1961, became the Jackson-Wood Professor there in 1966, and retired from there in 1975. He remained active after his retirement and consulted for IBM for some years.

Achievements

• Paul Flory was a leading pioneer in understanding the behavior of polymers in solution, and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1974 "for his fundamental achievements, both theoretical and experimental, in the physical chemistry of macromolecules".

Works

More photos

• book

  • Principles of Polymer Chemistry (The George Fisher Baker Non-Resident Lectureship in Chemistry at Cornell University)

    (chapter 1:Historical introduction Chapter 2: Type of poly...)

    1953
  • Statistical Mechanics of Chain Molecules

    (This book was written by Nobel laureate Paul Flory. It sy...)

    1989

Membership

• Committee on Human Rights of the National Academy of Sciences , United States

  1976 - 1984

Connections

Flory and his wife Emily Catherine Tabor (now deceased) had three children, Susan, Melinda and John.

Father:

Ezra Flory

Mother:

Martha (Brumbaugh) Flory

Wife:

Emily Catherine Tabor

Daughter:

Susan Flory

Son:

Paul John Flory

Daughter:

Melinda Flory