Leo Hendrik Baekeland HonFRSE ( / ˈb eɪ k l æ n d / BAYK-land, Dutch: [ˈleːjoː ˈɦɛndrɪɡ ˈbaːkəlɑnt]; November 14, 1863 – February 23, 1944) was a Belgian chemist. He studied in Belgium and Germany but worked mostly in the United States. He is best known for inventing Velox photographic paper in 1893 and Bakelite in 1907. People call him "The Father of the Plastics Industry" because he created Bakelite, a type of plastic that is inexpensive, does not catch fire easily, and can be used in many ways. This invention started the modern plastics industry.
Early life
Leo Baekeland was born in Ghent, Belgium, on November 14, 1863. His parents were Charles Baekeland, a cobbler, and Rosalia Merchie, a house maid. His siblings were Elodia Maria Baekeland, Melonia Leonia Baekeland, Edmundus Baekeland, Rachel Helena Baekeland, and Delphina Baekeland.
He told The Literary Digest: "The name is a Dutch word meaning 'Land of Beacons.'" He spent much of his early life in Ghent, Belgium. He graduated with honours from the Ghent Municipal Technical School and was awarded a scholarship by the City of Ghent to study chemistry at Ghent University, which he entered in 1880. He acquired a PhD maxima cum laude at the age of 21. After a brief appointment as Professor of Physics and Chemistry at the Government Higher Normal School in Bruges (1887–1889), he was appointed associate professor of chemistry at Ghent University in 1889.
Personal life
Baekeland married Céline Swarts [Wikidata] (1868–1944) on August 8, 1889, and they had two children. One of their grandsons, Brooks, married Barbara Daly in 1942, and they had one child. Hugh Karraker, one of their great-grandsons, spent his final years helping people understand how important Baekeland was. He made a documentary called All Things Bakelite, which was shown at film festivals and on PBS stations across the country.
Career
In 1889, Baekeland and his wife, Céline, used a travel scholarship to visit universities in England and the United States. They traveled to New York City, where Baekeland met Professor Charles F. Chandler from Columbia University and Richard Anthony from the E. and H.T. Anthony photographic company. Professor Chandler encouraged Baekeland to stay in the United States. Baekeland had already created a method to develop photographic plates using water instead of other chemicals, which he had patented in Belgium in 1887. Although this method was not always reliable, Anthony saw promise in Baekeland and offered him a job.
Baekeland worked for the Anthony company for two years. In 1891, he started his own business as a consulting chemist. However, after becoming ill and facing financial problems, he decided to return to his earlier work on creating a photographic paper that could be printed using artificial light. After two years of hard work, he improved the process and created a paper he called "Velox." This was the first photographic paper that was successfully sold to the public. At the time, the United States was experiencing an economic downturn, and no investors or buyers were interested in his new product. Because of this, Baekeland partnered with Leonard Jacobi to start the Nepera Chemical Company in Nepera Park, Yonkers, New York.
In 1899, Jacobi, Baekeland, and Albert Hahn, another business partner, sold Nepera to George Eastman of the Eastman Kodak Company for $750,000. Baekeland received about $215,000 from the sale.
With part of the money, Baekeland bought a house called "Snug Rock" in Yonkers, New York, where he built a well-equipped laboratory. He later said that one condition of selling Nepera was a rule that prevented him from working on photography research for at least 20 years. This meant he needed to find a new area of study. His first step was to travel to Germany in 1900 to learn more about electrochemistry at the Technical Institute in Charlottenburg.
After returning to the United States, Baekeland briefly helped Clinton Paul Townsend and Elon Huntington Hooker develop a working electrolytic cell. He was hired as an independent consultant to build and operate a pilot plant. Baekeland improved the diaphragm cell used in the chloralkali process by using woven asbestos cloth mixed with iron oxide, asbestos fiber, and iron hydroxide. These improvements helped create the Hooker Chemical Company and led to the construction of one of the world’s largest electrochemical plants at Niagara Falls.
Baekeland was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1935 and to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1936.
Invention of Bakelite
After his success with Velox, Baekeland looked for another area in chemistry that could lead to quick results. When asked why he worked with synthetic resins, he said his goal was to make money. By the 1900s, scientists had learned that many natural resins and fibers were polymeric, a term first used in 1833 by Jöns Jacob Berzelius. In 1872, Adolf von Baeyer studied phenols and aldehydes, including pyrogallol and benzaldehyde. He made a substance he called "black guck," which he thought was not useful for making synthetic dyes. His student, Werner Kleeberg, experimented with phenol and formaldehyde in 1891 but could not produce a usable material, as Baekeland later noted.
Baekeland studied the reactions of phenol and formaldehyde. He reviewed earlier research and worked carefully to control factors like temperature, pressure, and material amounts. His first promising idea was to create a synthetic substitute for shellac, a natural substance made by lac beetles. He made a soluble phenol-formaldehyde material called "Novolak," but he found its properties were not strong enough. Although Novolak was not a major commercial success, it is still used today, such as in photoresist.
Baekeland continued testing combinations of phenol and formaldehyde, interested in using them for molding. By controlling pressure and temperature, he created a hard, moldable plastic called Bakelite. Bakelite was made from phenol, then called carbolic acid, and formaldehyde. Its chemical name is polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride. In compression molding, the resin is mixed with fillers like wood or asbestos before being pressed into the final shape. Baekeland’s patent for making insoluble phenol-formaldehyde products was filed in July 1907 and granted in December 1909. In February 1909, he announced his discovery at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in New York.
In 1917, Baekeland became a professor at Columbia University. Documents from the Westchester County courthouse in New York show he became a U.S. citizen on December 16, 1919. In 1922, after legal battles that favored him, three companies—General Bakelite Co., Condensite Co., and Redmanol Chemical Products Co.—were merged into the Bakelite Corporation.
The invention of Bakelite marked the start of the plastics era. Bakelite was the first plastic that kept its shape after heating. It was used in radios, telephones, and electrical insulators because of its strong insulation and heat resistance. Its use soon expanded to many industries.
Baekeland received many awards, including the Perkin Medal in 1916 and the Franklin Medal in 1940. In 1974, he was inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame, and in 1978, he was added to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio. At the time of his death in 1944, global production of Bakelite was about 175,000 tons, used in over 15,000 products. He held more than 100 patents, including methods for separating copper and cadmium and for treating wood.
Later life and death
As Baekeland grew older, he became more unusual in his behavior. His biographer, Carl Kauffman, told a story on a radio show called All Things Considered: "He would walk into a pool wearing his clothes, get completely wet, walk out, and cool off without wearing a swimsuit or anything else. He explained that evaporation helps cool the body." He had strong disagreements with his son, who was expected to take over his business, about money and other matters. In 1939, he sold the General Bakelite Company to Union Carbide, and because his son asked him to, he retired from work. He lived alone and tried to create a large tropical garden at his winter home in Coconut Grove, Florida. He died from a stroke in a care facility in Beacon, New York, in 1944. Baekeland is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.