Elmer Keiser Bolton

Elmer Keiser Bolton (June 23, 1886 – July 30, 1968) was an American chemist and research director for DuPont, notable for his role in developing neoprene and directing the research that led to the discovery of nylon.

Bolton was born in Frankford, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the oldest of two brothers. His father ran the furniture store on Main Street and both he and his brother attended public school in Frankford and went on to college. Bolton went to Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania and took the Classical Course, receiving a B.A. Degree in 1908. From there he went to Harvard University, receiving his A.M. degree in 1910 and his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1913. His thesis advisor was Charles Loring Jackson and his dissertation concerned the chemistry of periodoquinones.

Several other prominent contemporaries of Bolton's at Harvard Graduate School were Roger Adams, Farrington Daniels, Frank C. Whitmore, James B. Sumner and James Bryant Conant. Adams was particularly influential through Bolton's career. They shared diverse interests, yet a drive for accomplishment in organic chemistry. In later years Adams had significant influence on Bolton's ideas about industrial support of chemical research and university students.

In 1913 Bolton won the Sheldon Fellowship, which he used to work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute outside of Berlin, Germany for two years with Professor Richard Willstätter. Here he worked on anthocyanins, a major program for Willstätter, and published three papers on isolation and structures of anthocyanin pigments. Willstätter, apparently impressed by Bolton's ability but frustrated by his tendency to make arithmetic mistakes, commented "You must have been a bank teller." To his surprise Bolton replied that he had been a bank teller, this was how he paid his way through college.

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