:John Rex Whinfield
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John Rex Whinfield CBE (16 February 1901 in Sutton, Surrey, England – 6 July 1966 in Dorking, Surrey){{cite web |url=http://www.bookrags.com/biography/john-r-whinfield-woc/|title= World of Chemistry|date=2005 |publisher= Thomson Gale|access-date=1 November 2009}}{{cite journal |last1= Allen|first1= P C |year= 1967|title= Obituary|journal=Chemistry in Britain }} was a British chemist. Together with James Tennant Dickson, Whinfield investigated polyesters and produced and patented the first polyester fibre in 1941, which they named Terylene (also known as Dacron) equal to or surpassing nylon in toughness and resilience.
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. While working for the Calico Printers' Association at Accrington, 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,{{Cite web |title=Polyester |url=https://www.modip.ac.uk/exhibitions/polymorphia/polyester |access-date=2023-08-12 |website=Museum of Design in Plastics |language=en}} but due to wartime secrecy restrictions, it was not made public until 1946.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] ICI (Terylene) and DuPont (Dacron) went on to produce their own versions of the fibre.{{Cite web |date=2023-07-13 |title=A Decade of PosiCharge |url=https://www.education.sanmar.com/decorator-relations/a-decade-of-posicharge/ |access-date=2023-08-12 |website=Chemplast Sanmar |language=en-US}}
Whinfield served as an assistant director of chemical research in the Ministry of Supply during World War II. In 1947 he joined ICI.
The library in the Department of Chemistry at the University of York is named in memory of Whinfield.{{cite web|url=http://www.york.ac.uk/chemistry/undergraduate/ourdepartment/library/|title=Department of Chemistry Library|publisher=University of York|access-date=22 May 2016}}
Awards
- Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1954)
- Honorary fellowship of the Textile Institute (1955)
- Perkin Medal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists (1956)
References
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Category:Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Category:People educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood
Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Category:Imperial Chemical Industries people