Dr. Benjamin St. John Garvey (1900–1973) was a chemist at BF Goodrich who worked under Waldo L. Semon on the development of synthetic rubber, contributed to understanding of

vulcanization Vulcanization (British: Vulcanisation) is a range of processes for hardening rubbers. The term originally referred exclusively to the treatment of natural rubber with sulfur, which remains the most common practice. It has also grown to include ...

, and developed early techniques for small scale evaluation of rubbers. In particular, he was the inventor of the

Garvey die Garvey and O'Garvey are Irish surnames, derived from the Gaelic ''Ó Gairbhith'', also spelt ''Ó Gairbheith'', meaning "descendant of Gairbhith". ''Gairbhith'' itself means "rough peace". There are three distinct Ó Gairbhith septs in Ireland: ...

for evaluating the extrusion quality of rubber compounds. Garvey was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He obtained his BS in chemistry at

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

1921, taught chemistry at Episcopalian

Boone University Huachung University () was a Christian university in Wuhan, in China's Yangtze valley, originally called Boone University, was founded by the union of several Christian universities in 1924 and renamed Huachung in 1929. The university expanded unti ...

Wuchang Wuchang forms part of the urban core of and is one of 13 urban districts of the prefecture-level city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, China. It is the oldest of the three cities that merged into modern-day Wuhan, and stood on the ri ...

China for 3 years, then returned to complete his MS in 1925. He completed his PhD in organic chemistry under

James Bryant Conant James Bryant Conant (March 26, 1893 – February 11, 1978) was an American chemist, a transformative President of Harvard University, and the first U.S. Ambassador to West Germany. Conant obtained a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard in 1916 ...

at Harvard and then joined BF Goodrich in 1927. In 1958, Garvey was chairman of the ACS Rubber Division. Garvey was the 1965 recipient of the

Charles Goodyear Medal The Charles Goodyear Medal is the highest honor conferred by the American Chemical Society, Rubber Division. Established in 1941, the award is named after Charles Goodyear, the discoverer of vulcanization, and consists of a gold medal, a framed c ...

. He received the ASTM D11 Award of Merit in 1966.

References

Polymer scientists and engineers Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni 1900 births 1973 deaths University of Illinois alumni 20th-century American chemists {{US-chemist-stub