I provocative
b~acromolecularScientists: From Pot-Boilers to Programmers
opinion
The following remarks are a result of an invitation to comment on the educational preparation of polymer scientists a t a large chemical company like the Du Pont Company. In preparing this, however, I found myself in a situation similar to that of Mark Twain who reputedly said when he wrote "Pudd'n Head Wilson," that he was not able to follow his original plot because several of the characters did things different from those than he had planned for them. Almost two vears aeo. - , the New York Times nuhlished n chart that depiited the conversion of petrochemicals from raw materials to finished mods. Two billion dollars of feedstocks produced by the petroleum and chemical industries ultimately vielded 8 billion dollars of monomers. 16 billion dollars of bo~ymersand 100 billion dollars ofplaBtic and rubber products. T o produce these products efficiently in modern chemical plants required not only the commitment of enormous sums of money for long periods of time but also the economies of scale. All premised-on the assumption that raw materials and energy based on natural gas andlor crude oil derived feedstocks would continue to he available and abundant. Since the chemical industry serves other basic industries it is no stranger to sn
