In 1965, a Polish-American woman chemist made an unexpected discovery and created a compound five times stronger than steel helping in saving lives through bulletproof vests, spacecrafts and helmets. The woman was Stephanie Louise Kwolek, an American chemist of Polish descent who worked at DuPont for more than four decades. Her research in polymers led to the development of Kevlar, a fibre known for its strength, low weight and resistance to heat. Kwolek was studying solutions made from long molecular chains when she noticed a cloudy liquid that behaved differently from the solutions researchers usually expected. Instead of discarding it, she examined it further and spun it into fibres. The work later became part of products used for protection and structural purposes.
