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(1863–1944). Belgium-born American industrial chemist Leo Hendrik Baekeland helped found the modern plastics industry through his invention of Bakelite. Bakelite was the first thermosetting plastic (a plastic that does not soften when heated).

Baekeland was born on November 14, 1863, in Ghent, Belgium. He received his doctorate from the University of Ghent when he was 21 years old. Baekeland then taught at the university until 1889, when he went to the United States and joined a photographic firm. He soon set up his own company to manufacture his invention, Velox, a photographic paper that could be developed under artificial light. Velox was the first commercially successful photographic paper. In 1899 Baekeland sold his company and rights to that paper to American inventor George Eastman for $1,000,000.

Baekeland’s search, begun in 1905, for a synthetic substitute for shellac led to the discovery of Bakelite. Bakelite is a product formed from formaldehyde and phenol when the compounds are placed under high temperature and pressure. Though the material had been reported earlier, Baekeland was the first to find a method of forming it into the thermosetting plastic. Baekeland received many honors for his invention and served as president of the American Chemical Society in 1924. He died on February 23, 1944, in Beacon, New York.