I just finished reading Grand Duke, Wizard and Bohemian, a biography of Leo Baekeland by Carl Kaufmann.
I'd read various short accounts of how he came to work on phenol / formaldehyde polymers, but, strangely, not one of these sources ever talked about
why Baekeland ever thought something worthwhile would come of it. More to the point, none of those accounts mentioned work by previous
researchers who were trying to make things like artificial shellac from phenol or cresol and various aldehydes the previous several years. Those
chemists saw clues that a new, exceptional material might be in the offing if the exothermic condensation reaction could somehow be tamed.
Now it all makes much more sense to me.Corrosive Joeseph - 29-12-2019 at 06:20
100+ Years of Plastics, Leo Baekeland and Beyond - E. Thomas Strom and Seth C. Rasmussen
