Paul
Schlack
(1897 - 1987)
synthesised
nylon 6
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Paul Schlack was born on 22 December 1897 and
completed his studies at the Technischen in
Stuttgart in 1921. After working as a research
chemist in Copenhagen for a year he returned to
Stuttgart, taking with him a keen interest in
amide chemistry. In 1926 he became head of the
Berlin laboratories of Aceta, part of IG Farben,
working on cellulose acetate textiles. The major
objective was the 'naturalising' of acetate to
behave like an animal fibre. For this, polyamides
seemed to Schlack very promising and, although he
did some work in this direction - albeit outside
his official area of responsibility - it was
inhibited by economic constraints until the 1930s.
He then discovered that the viscous melt obtained
by the acid hydrolysis of raw caprolactam could
be spun into filaments of what is now known as
nylon 6. He also made some rod 2 - 3 cm in
diameter which could not be broken with a heavy
hammer. The interest of his superiors, who were
previously unaware of these sideline activities,
was now assured. Having established that there
was no conflict with the patent rights of DuPont
associated with the pioneering discovery in the
USA of nylon 66 by Wallace
Carothers in 1931, the new material was
produced on a pilot scale and the first nylon 6
monofilaments were sold to the brush industry in
1939 under the tradename Perlon. Large-scale
manufacture of filament yarn at Landsberg, east
of Berlin, followed in 1943. After the war, Paul
Schlack was in charge when Farbwerke Hoechst
started to make nylon 6 fibre on a commercial
scale at Bobingen in 1950. He then became
director of the company's textile research
department.
In 1961 he was made honorary professor and
head of the Institute of Fibre Chemistry at his
alma mater, the Stuttgart Technischen Hochschule.
He later retired to Echterdingen and died in 1987.
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