Invasion of Chemical Industry

The chemistry of World War I was largely based on the by-products of coal; the chemistry underlying World War II is based to an amazing degree on the by-products of petroleum.

Last week, as if symbolizing this momentous change, which may affect U.S. industry long after World War II is over, the Society of Chemical Industry gave its top award, the Perkin Medal, not to a leader of an established chemical firm like Carbide, Monsanto or Du Pont, but to Dr. Robert Erastus Wilson, head of Pan American Petroleum & Transport Co., a subsidiary of Standard Oil Co. (Ind.).

Dr. Wilson, who got the award primarily for his application of chemical engineering principles to oil, was not the only petroleum man present at the meeting. Flanking him at the speaker's table were two other top-flight scientists who have made their mark in chemistry via petroleum research. One was Per Keyser Frolich, president of the American Chemical Society and director of the chemical division of Standard of New Jersey's potent Esso laboratories. The other was Dr. Thomas Midgley Jr., president-elect of the Society, pioneer in the development of antiknock gasoline, and vice president of Ethyl Gasoline Corp.

The trio of Midgley, Wilson and Frolich have more in common than just their arcane researches. Midgley reminded the Society that he and Wilson had not only been born in the same town (Beaver Falls, Pa.), but had been delivered by the same local doctor, and had used the same crib, which Midgley's parents passed on to the Wilson family. Wilson graduated from M.I.T. and became a major in the chemical warfare branch of the U.S. Army at 25. Frolich is also a graduate of M.I.T., like Wilson was a member of its potent Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry.

All three were bright young men during World War I. All three followed a path from being scientists to being top industrial executives. But most important, all three have participated in the invasion of petroleum research into the chemical field. That invasion has now borne fruit. Most important wartime petroleum by-product is toluene, the basis of TNT (trinitrotoluene) which the industry now provides at many times the scale of World War I when it was derived from coal. Another critical petroleum derivative is butadiene, basis for synthetic rubber (TIME, Nov. 30). Vital to the war, derivates of petroleum may be equally important in the post-war era. Just as research in coal by-products gave birth after World War I to a whole new series of peacetime industries--plastics, solvents, lacquers, synthetic fabrics--so the cheap plentiful toluene derived from petroleum may be used for production of new and better plastics, perfumes, flowers, perhaps vitamins, many another unpredictable synthetic chemical. In the new world coal products will certainly hold their place in the making of dyestuffs, textiles and some forms of rubber. But, if present portents come true, the chemistry of petroleum may be the most active and most creative sector of what is already the fastest stepping industry of the U.S.

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