STEPHANIE KWOLEK

I tell young people to reach for the stars. And I can't think of a greater high than you could possibly get than by inventing something.

All sorts of things can happen when you’re open to new ideas and playing around with things.

[At DuPont,] I was very fortunate that I worked under men who were very much interested in making discoveries and inventions. They were very much interested in what they were doing, and they left me alone. And I was able to experiment on my own, and I found this very stimulating. It appealed to the creative person in me.

Not long ago, I got to meet some troopers whose lives had been saved. They came with their wives, their children, their parents. It was a very moving occasion.

I hope I'm saving lives. There are very few people in their careers that have the opportunity to do something to benefit mankind.

Even in my neighborhood, the kids come to me for interviews for their term papers. I ask them later what grades they got, and they're always A-pluses.

I guess that's just the life of an inventor: what people do with your ideas takes you totally by surprise.

I was working with these very long-chain ... extended-chain polymers, where you had a lot of benzene rings in them. ... Transforming a polymer solution from a liquid to a fiber requires a process called spinning. ... We spun it and it spun beautifully. It [Kevlar] was very strong and very stiff-unlike anything we had made before. I knew that I had made a discovery. 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.

I guess that's just the life of an inventor: what people do with your ideas takes you totally by surprise.

Not long ago, I got to meet some troopers whose lives had been saved. They came with their wives, their children, their parents. It was a very moving occasion.

I hope I'm saving lives. There are very few people in their careers that have the opportunity to do something to benefit mankind.

Even in my neighborhood, the kids come to me for interviews for their term papers. I ask them later what grades they got, and they're always A-pluses.

All sorts of things can happen when you’re open to new ideas and playing around with things.

[At DuPont,] I was very fortunate that I worked under men who were very much interested in making discoveries and inventions. They were very much interested in what they were doing, and they left me alone. And I was able to experiment on my own, and I found this very stimulating. It appealed to the creative person in me.

I was working with these very long-chain ... extended-chain polymers, where you had a lot of benzene rings in them. ... Transforming a polymer solution from a liquid to a fiber requires a process called spinning. ... We spun it and it spun beautifully. It [Kevlar] was very strong and very stiff-unlike anything we had made before. I knew that I had made a discovery. 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.

I tell young people to reach for the stars. And I can't think of a greater high than you could possibly get than by inventing something.