Joseph H. Simons
American chemist
Joseph H. Simons (10 May 1897 – 30 December 1983) was a U.S. chemist who became famous for discovering one of the first practical ways to mass-produce fluorocarbons in the 1930s while a professor of chemical engineering at Pennsylvania State University. In 1950, he and other employees of 3M received a patent for the procedure of electrochemical fluorination.
Early life and education
Joseph H. Simons was born on 10 May 1897 in Chicago.
He studied chemistry at the University of Illinois. After graduation in 1919 he continued chemistry and mathematics at the University of California, where in 1922, he received a master's degree and in 1923 a doctorate.
Career
He returned to the Midwest and became a professor of chemical engineering at Pennsylvania State College, now Pennsylvania State University.
In the late 1930s he passed fluorine gas through a carbon arc creating fluorocarbon. Results were published in 1938.
In 1940, he was recruited to the Manhattan Project by Harold Urey, a physical chemist with expertise in isotope separation, to help with uranium enrichment necessary to build a nuclear bomb. Simons's fluorocarbons turned out to be inert enough to withstand the corrosive effects of uranium hexafluoride and thus could be used as factory parts in the chemical array of sealants, gaskets or pipes, for example.
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