Women in Chemistry: Kathleen Taylor


Kathleen C. Taylor
The Clean Air Act of 1970 demanded that automobile makers reduce tailpipe emissions by 90 percent. But how? Chemical engineer Kathleen C. Taylor and other scientists developed a new device called a catalytic converter, which uses chemical reactions to turn noxious emissions into less harmful gases. Introduced in new cars by 1975, catalytic converters reduced auto exhaust pollution by 95 percent! Kathleen Taylor worked on the catalytic converter as a scientist at General Motors: "I was attracted to General Motors because of their position as a major industrial laboratory and because of the opportunity I found to get in on the ground . . . of a whole new branch of catalysis—environmental catalysts."		Courtesy Northwestern University Archives.
About Her Life Kathleen Taylor was born in 1942. Some of her best childhood memories are of the "painting holidays" she and her mother used to take to Ireland, where they would paint the country’s scenic landscapes in watercolor. In 1964 Taylor earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from New Jersey's Rutgers University and then a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Northwestern University outside Chicago in 1968. She traveled to Scotland to do postdoctoral research at the University of Edinburgh before returning to the United States to work in industry. In graduate school Taylor had done research on catalysts. When she went to work at General Motors in 1970, this research would prove to be very useful. That same year, the U.S. Congress passed the Clean Air Act. Among other things, this law required car makers to clean up the exhaust produced by their new cars. In those days, exhaust released from the tailpipe of a car was full of toxic compounds like carbon monoxide and oxides of nitrogen. Some years earlier Eugene Houdry, a French scientist working in the United States, had invented a device called a catalytic converter that made auto exhaust much cleaner, and it would be a big part of Taylor's research at General Motors. In chemistry, a catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed in the reaction. A catalytic converter is a device located between a car's engine and exhaust pipe. The converter is filled with tiny particles of the metals platinum and rhodium. These metals catalyze chemical reactions that turn toxic compounds in the exhaust into less toxic ones. The earliest catalytic converters had problems in that they tended to convert nitric oxide into ammonia. Since ammonia is also toxic, this really didn't help matters much. Taylor and her coworkers invented an improved catalytic converter that converted nitric oxide into nitrogen gas, which is not only non-toxic, but also makes up most of the air we breathe. In the years since this invention, Taylor has advanced to the position of director of the materials and processes laboratory at General Motors Research and Development. In addition to her scientific work, she still enjoys watercolor painting. For Further Reading on the Web Kathleen Taylor profile — self-profile from the Web site Engineer Girl!, which is part of the National Academy of Engineering's Celebration of Women in Engineering project. Mobile Source Emissions: Past, Present, and Future — information on air pollution from vehicles, engines, and other machines that move, from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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