John Rex Whinfield

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John Rex Whinfield CBE (16 February 1901; Sutton, Surrey, England – 6 July 1966; Dorking, Surrey)^[1]^[2] was a British chemist who, together with James Tennant Dickson investigated polyesters and in 1941 produced and patented^[1] the first polyester fibre which they named Terylene, also known as Dacron, equal to or surpassing nylon in toughness and resilience.^[1]

Education

Whinfield attended Merchant Taylors' School and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge where he read natural sciences (1921) and chemistry (1922).

Career

He worked initially as an assistant to Charles Frederick Cross and Edward John Bevan who had done earlier work on viscose rayon in 1892. In 1924 he was employed as a research chemist by the Calico Printers' Association based in Manchester.

During the late 1930s, the hunt was on for new synthetic fibres to rival Wallace H. Carothers' nylon. Whinfield and his assistant James Tennant Dickson investigated other types of polymers with textile fibre potential. Whinfield and Dickson discovered how to condense terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol to yield a new polymer which could be drawn into a fibre. Whinfield and Dickson patented their invention in July 1941, but due to wartime secrecy restrictions it was not made public until 1946.^[3] ICI (Terylene) and DuPont (Dacron) went on to produce their own versions of the fibre.

Whinfield served as an assistant director of chemical research in the Ministry of Supply during World War II. In 1947 he joined ICI.

Awards

Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1954) ^[3]
Honorary fellowship of the Textile Institute (1955)
Perkin Medal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists (1956)

References

↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "World of Chemistry". Thomson Gale. 2005. Retrieved 1 November 2009.
↑ Allen, P (1967). "Obituary". Chemistry in Britain.
↑ 3.0 3.1 Frank Greenaway, ‘Whinfield, John Rex (1901–1966)’, rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/38119, accessed 20 June 2011]

Persondata
Name	Whinfield, John Rex
Alternative names
Short description	Chemist
Date of birth	16 February 1901
Place of birth	Sutton, Surrey, England
Date of death	6 July 1966
Place of death	Dorking, Surrey, England

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