John Ugelstad
| John Ugelstad | |
|---|---|
| Born |
March 31, 1921 Trondheim |
| Died | April 3, 1997 (aged 76) |
| Nationality | Norwegian |
| Fields | polymer chemistry |
| Education | chemical engineering |
| Alma mater | Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH) |
| Known for | discovering a process to manufacture microbeads and dynabeads |
| Spouse | Viola Kristine Rigstad |
John Ugelstad (31 March 1921 – 3 April 1997) was a Norwegian chemical engineer and inventor, known for discovering a process to manufacture monodisperse micropellets or microbeads and dynabeads. He was a professor at the Norwegian Institute of Technology and consultant for DuPont.
Ugelstad was born in Trondheim to Karen Stene (1898-1993) and Petter Endresen Ugelstad (1893-1975), a factory owner. He grew up and attended school in Trondheim. After graduating in 1941 he began to study chemistry at Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH); the German occupation of Trondheim during World War II delayed his studies and he passed the engineering exam in 1948.
After a few years in business, he worked a few years at Philips Group's research department in Eindhoven in the Netherlands and obtained a PhD at the University of Leiden in 1955. He was employed by SINTEF and since 1957 by the Institute of Industrial Chemistry at NTH. During a sabbatical in Norwegian's research department from 1964 to 1965, he was the brains behind a new and epochal theory of emulsion polymerization which replaced the former and well-established theories and was dominated the field. This work was in practice as important as the monodisperse spheres.
In 1966 he became a professor at NTH where he stayed until 1991. Besides teaching and research, he took on a number of assignments for industry, including being the main consultant in theoretical polymer chemistry for DuPont. Ugelstad was already an internationally known researcher for his work in polymer chemistry when he first heard about the problem of preparing monodisperse spheres at a conference in the United States. Back in Trondheim he began to romp with the problem and thought it should be possible to make the particles in a regular laboratory. He said that he always thought best at night and one late hour in 1977 an idea occurred to him. When he realized how easy it was to manufacture the tiny particles (15 million of them weigh a milligram, and the spheres are similar almost to microglobules in milk), he thought others would also discover the method. Therefore, he patented it. The patent application concerned a method for producing polymer particles in a two stage treatment dissolved in water, where they can absorb more than 1,000 times their own volume of water soluble organisms.
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