Linneaus C. Dorman

People who knew Wallace Carothers sometimes talk about what a wonderful baritone singing voice he had. If we could go back in time to the early 1950s and attend a service of the Ward Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Peoria, Illinois, we would hear in the youth choir another singer named Linneaus C. Dorman. As you're about to learn, Dorman and Carothers have a lot more in common than just their singing voices.

At this time, Dorman was in Peoria studying chemistry at Bradley University. He had been born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, on June 28, 1935. (This was just a few months after Carothers team had invented nylon 6-6.) He was the son of two teachers who had the foresight to send their child to the laboratory school at South Carolina State College (now South Carolina State University). This laboratory school was the college's training ground for student teachers, and it afforded Dorman a much better education than was normally available in the rural South at that time. As a boy, he became interested in science by playing with a chemistry set that belonged to a friend of his. He was fascinated by the idea of making new things. A big part of chemistry is taking existing molecules, taking them apart, and reassembling their atoms in new ways to make new molecules. This is what chemists call synthesis, and it captivated the young boy's mind.

In high school, Dorman's teachers recognized his talent in science, and encouraged him to take more science courses. This fed his interest in science even further, and when the time came for him to go to college, he would study chemistry. But first, he had to get to college. Higher education has always been expensive, but Bradley University had a scholarship program for the children of World War I veterans. His father had seen combat in France during the war, and this led Dorman to travel far from home to get his education.

Though homesick, he did well in college. Bradley was the home to the U.S. Northern Regional Research Laboratory whose mission was to use science to help the farmers of the Midwest be more productive. Agricultural chemistry was very important at Bradley, and it would be for Dorman in shaping the path his career would take.

Once he had earned his bachelor's degree at Bradley, he earned his Ph.D. at Indiana University. Dorman didn't have to worry about tuition at Indiana, because his schooling was paid for by a fellowship from Dow Chemical. After graduation he was quickly hired to work at Dow Chemical. Unlike Wallace Carothers and Stephanie Kwolek, who spent most of their careers focused on one area of research, Dorman researched all kinds of things. At first, he was involved in agricultural chemistry. Since farming is all about raising plants and animals, Dorman and Dow eventually became involved in the chemistry of living things in general, and this led them both into studying a family of macromolecules called proteins.

Proteins

The composer Béla Bartók was known for his strange and innovative music. He once said that in order to make something that is completely new, you have to go back to that which is very old. In this spirit, Dorman turned for inspiration to the some of the oldest polymers we know—the proteins found in every living thing.

Wallace Carothers had done this in his work many years earlier. When he sought to make a synthetic replacement for silk, he created a macromolecule with a molecular structure very similar to that of natural silk, which is a protein. Both nylon and silk are polyamides. In fact, all proteins are polyamides. In your body, proteins perform an amazing amount of tasks. Some are strong fibers, like silk. Your hair and fingernails are made of a strong protein called collagen. Other proteins carry oxygen to your cells. Still other proteins called enzymes act as catalysts, assisting in important chemical reactions in the body.

Dorman knew two important things about proteins. He knew they could perform an amazing variety of jobs in the body. He also knew that the molecular structure of a protein determines how it behaves. With this in mind, Dorman set out to create new proteins. By altering their molecular structure, he hoped to create proteins that could be used in the human body for medical purposes.

In his career he created synthetic peptides that did many different things. He made one synthetic derivative of the natural protein fibrinogen that helps keep blood from clotting, which can help prevent heart attacks. He also invented peptides that could be used to diagnose diseases. But one of his most important inventions was a peptide that could be used to replace bone material in the body.

A New Direction for Synthetic Polymers

Wallace Carothers, and later scientists like Stephanie Kwolek, mostly carried out research on materials for making things once made from cotton, bone, or wood. Dorman's research was in a different direction. The bone replacements and diagnostic tests he helped create were some early examples of using polymers for biological and medical purposes. Today, the science of plastics and fibers is very well developed. However the use of designed synthetic polymers in medicine is just beginning, and many great discoveries are waiting for those scientists who will follow in Dorman's footsteps. The future of polymer science may very well belong to people who, like Dorman, investigate the many amazing things polymers can do in living systems.

Dorman researched many other areas of chemistry in his long career at Dow Chemical. He invented other polymers besides peptides. One interesting invention was his system for encapsulating agricultural fertilizers in shells of synthetic polymers this slowly degrade over time. This allows the fertilizer to be released into the soil slowly, instead of all at once. In this way the enviornmental impact of fertilizer use is reduced. Now retired from Dow, Dorman has received twenty-six U.S. patents for his inventions.

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