biography
| name: |
Nieuwland, Julius Arthur
|
pronunciation:
[nyooland]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1878–1936)
|
| biography:
| Roman Catholic clergyman, chemist, and botanist, born in Hansbeke, Belgium. His family emigrated to the USA in 1880. Ordained in the Congregation of the Holy Cross (1903), he taught at his alma mater, Notre Dame, from 1904. Starting as a chemist, he discovered the reaction between acetylene and arsenic trichloride (1904) which others developed into lewisite, a poison gas. As a result, he almost gave up chemistry, turning to botany until the end of World War 1. After 1925, further chemical experiments led to a collaboration with Du Pont that yielded neoprene, the first commercially successful synthetic rubber. |
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