Inventor Name
Marvel, Carl Shipp “Speed”
Repository
Chemical Heritage Foundation
Othmer Library
315 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
215-873-8265
http://othmerlib.chemheritage.org
Physical Description
46 linear feet
Summary
Born in 1894 on a small farm outside of Waynesville, Illinois, “Speed” Marvel got his start at the dawning of the American chemical industry during World War I when supplies of chemicals from the great German industrial houses were disrupted. In the 1920s Marvel befriended Wallace H. Carothers, the great chemist and Father of Nylon, which ultimately led to Marvel serving as a consultant to the E. I. DuPont de Namours Company, a professional relationship that lasted for over a half century. During World War II, Marvel worked for the National Defense Research Committee to create synthetic rubber, and the efforts of the group that he spearheaded were crowned by success within one year’s time. In the latter portion of his career, Marvel became interested in the problem of creating high-temperature stable polymers. Under the sponsorship of the USDA, the U. S. Army, and the U. S. Air Force, his investigations finally bore fruit when he successfully synthesized polybenzimidazole, a material with significant applications to national defense as well as to everyday living. Polybenzimidazole is as useful to the fabrication of spacesuits as it is to the manufacture of oven mitts. For his years of service, President Ronald Reagan presented Marvel with the National Medal of Science in 1986. Marvel passed away two years later in 1988. The collection is broken down into three series: I. Papers, II. Artifacts and Memorabilia, III. Audiovisual Materials. The first series is further divided into subseries. Carl Shipp Marvel, best known as “Speed” took a lackadaisical approach to his personal papers, as a result the first fifty years of his career, spent at the University of Illinois have gone undocumented. This collection of material covers his second “retirement” career at the University of Arizona. Needless to say, the collection lacks inclusiveness. There are a few personal papers about his family and background, a large quantity of professional papers dealing with his working career from 1960 to 1984, and two additional series, one containing a miscellaneous collection of artifacts and memorabilia covering his entire working life and another consisting of audiovisual materials, mostly photographs.
Finding Aid
http://othmerlib.chemheritage.org/search/?searchtype=a&searcharg=marvel