Leo Baekeland

Leo Hendrik Baekeland (November 14, 1863 - February 23, 1944) was a Belgian-born American chemist who invented Velox photographic paper (1893) and Bakelite (1907), an inexpensive, nonflammable, versatile, and popular plastic.

Later life

Baekeland became a multimillionaire as a result of the explosion in the manufacture and use of Bakelite. Baekeland visited England in 1916 and met James Swinburne, who almost ten years earlier had coincidentally experimented with and created a material identical to Bakelite only to find that Baekeland had been awarded the patent the day before. Baekeland made Swinburne the chairman of the new Bakelite Limited, his British subsidiary. Baekeland appeared on the cover of TIME Magazine on September 22, 1924.

Related Topics:
England - James Swinburne - TIME Magazine - September 22 - 1924

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As Baekeland got older, he became more eccentric, getting into fierce battles with his son (and presumptive heir) over salary and other issues. He sold the General Bakelite Company to Union Carbide in 1939, at his son's prompting, retired, and eventually became a recluse, eating all of his meals from cans and becoming obsessed with developing an immense tropical garden on his Florida estate. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in a sanatorium in Beacon, New York. Baekeland is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Related Topics:
Union Carbide - Cerebral hemorrhage - Beacon, New York - Sleepy Hollow Cemetery - Sleepy Hollow, New York

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Baekeland's great-grandson, Anthony Baekeland spent several years in a psychiatric hospital after murdering his mother, Barbara Daly Baekeland; ironically, he suffocated himself with a plastic bag in 1981.

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In 1978, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Related Topics:
1978 - National Inventors Hall of Fame

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