Perkin Medal Goes to Robert Gore

Robert W. Gore, the chemist who invented the fabric Gore-Tex, has received this year’s Perkin Medal, one of the chemical industry’s highest honors.

Awarded each year by the America Section of the London-based Society of Chemical Industry, the Perkin Medal honors scientists and engineers for their contributions to the improvement of the quality of life and the world competitiveness of the U.S. economy. The award was established in 1906 to honor Sir William Henry Perkin, a chemist who discovered the first synthetic aniline dye as a student at age 18, an achievement that revolutionized dye chemistry and gave birth to the modern innovation-based chemical industry.

“Like Perkin, Gore was still a young student when he made his first seminal discovery,” says Arnold Thackray of the Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia. As a student at the University of Delaware, Gore showed in 1959 that the fluoropolymer polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, also known as DuPont’s Teflon) could be used as a versatile insulator for electronic wire and cables. This discovery became the first commercial product for his family’s business—W. L. Gore & Associates—and it “began a lifetime devoted to innovation and entrepreneurship in the chemical world,” Thackray notes.

A decade later, after earning his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota, Gore figured out how to make an expanded type of PTFE. Dubbed Gore-Tex, expanded PTFE led to the introduction of the world’s first breathable waterproof fabric, used by explorers, hikers, cyclists, firefighters, and police officers. Today, Gore-Tex is also used in myriad commercial applications, including artificial arteries and other medical implants, dental floss, specialty guitar strings, and pipe seals.

Gore is now chairman of the family business, and he attributes his success to the hard work of his firm’s 7,000 employees. Gore says he will direct the $5,000 scholarship that comes with the Perkin Medal to a former Gore employee now pursuing a Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of Delaware.