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Overview

Howard E. Simmons (1929-1997) directed DuPont's Central Research and Development (CR&D) Department during several years of diversification into molecular biology, ceramics, electronics and chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) replacements. He joined DuPont in 1954 after receiving his doctorate in organic chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and spent his entire 38-year career in CR&D. He became Director in 1979 and a company vice president in 1983. Simmons was a strong advocate for the value of basic research during a highly competitive era when such research was pressured to produce marketable results. His own contributions to chemical research included his co-discovery of the Simmons-Smith reaction for making cyclopropanes, highly flammable gasses used in organic syntheses. Under Simmons' direction CR&D broadened its research mission in the 1980s, moving the company beyond chemistry into the life sciences, pharmaceuticals and superconductors. In the 1990s the CR&D played a key role in developing environmentally safe hydrochlorofluorocarbon and hydrofluorocarbon substitutes for CFC refrigerants and aerosols after those products were shown to deplete the earth's stratospheric ozone layer.

In 1975 Simmons was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 1992 President George Bush awarded him the National Medal of Science, and in 1994 Simmons received DuPont's Lavoisier Medal as well as the American Chemical Society's highest award, the Priestly Medal. Simmons's two sons, John W. and Howard E. Simmons III, both earned doctorates in organic chemistry and found successful careers at DuPont. Simmons retired from DuPont in 1991.

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