Finding Aids

Science and Corporate Strategy is a scholarly history of research and development at the DuPont Company authored by David A. Hounshell (1950-) and John Kenly Smith (1951-). As part of their research, Hounshell and Smith conducted sixty-one oral history interviews with forty-seven current and former chemical engineers involved in DuPont's R & D programs. The interviews constitute an exhaustive first-person account of DuPont's research programs with special emphasis on personalities and the organizational culture of the various DuPont research facilities.

Wallace Hume Carothers (1896-1937) was a chemist and inventor of Neoprene artificial rubber and Nylon synthetic fiber. He worked as a chemist in E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company's Fundamental Research Program from 1928 until his death in 1937. The records include the handwritten transcripts of a series of interviews with persons who knew and worked with Carothers, conducted in 1978 and 1979. The interviews were conducted by Adeline Bassett Cook Strange (1917-2004), a teacher, researcher, and volunteer who spent her life dedicated to various charitable projects around Wilmington, Delaware.