George S. Whitby

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

George Stafford Whitby (1887–1972) was a British-born chemist who led the rubber laboratory at the University of Akron and taught rubber chemistry in the United States for many years. He received the Charles Goodyear Medal in 1954 and was inducted into the International Rubber Science Hall of Fame in 1972. In 1986, the Rubber Division created the George Stafford Whitby Award in his honor.

Whitby was born in Hull, England, on May 23, 1887. He moved to the United States in 1942 and became a U.S. citizen in 1946. He died on January 10, 1972, in Delray Beach, Florida.

Education and career: He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the Royal College of Science in London in 1907. He received MS and PhD degrees from McGill University in 1918 and 1920. After his undergraduate studies, he worked as a chemist for Societe Financiere des Caoutchoucs in Malaysia. He became a full professor at McGill University in 1923, and in 1929 he became director of the chemical division of the National Chemical Research Council of Canada. He joined the University of Akron faculty in 1942 and retired in 1954. His most cited work studied emulsifier-free polymerization in water.