Finding Aids

Ellis Leroy "Lee" Hawk, Jr. (1926-2012) was a chemical engineer with Hercules Inc., and later the engineering director at Himont. He was involved in establishing polypropylene plants all over the world during the 1950s through the 1980s. This small collection consists of a scrapbook of photographs showing plant construction and a travel memoir written by Hawk about his career in the chemical industry. The memoir provides context for the scrapbook and an interesting portrait of an American businessman during the early stages of globalization.

James R. Thomen (1926-) was manager of the Experimental Station from 1975 to 1985 when he retired. The DuPont Company's Experimental initially, was to be a small laboratory to screen inventions which were coming into the company from outside independent inventors specifically for research on black powder, smokeless powder, and dynamite, but soon its mission was altered and it became a large industrial research facility focused on innovative advancements in chemistry. This collection consists primarily of photographs of buildings at the Experimental Station in Wilmington, Delaware taken between 1910 and 1950.