3. Kevlar
Stephanie Kwolek was a chemist at the DuPont Company in Wilmington, Delaware, when she invented the stronger-than-steel fiber in 1965. She first created the material by accident, while trying to create a new fiber to be used in tires. nowadays, Kevlar is used for tennis rackets, ropes and cables, parachute lines and bulletproof vests.
“I knew that I had made a discovery,” Kwolek said in an interview several years ago. “I didn’t shout ‘Eureka,’ but I was very excited, as was the whole laboratory excited, and management was excited because we were looking for something new, something different, and this was it.”
