Theodore L. Cairns

Theodore L. Cairns ( born July 20, 1914 in Edmonton, † September 16, 1994 ) was a Canadian- American chemist. He was Research Director at DuPont and Research Advisor to the U.S. President Richard Nixon.

Cairns studied at the University of Alberta Chemistry with a bachelor's degree in 1936 and in 1939 Roger Adams received his PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign ( about the stereochemistry of substituted biphenyls ). By 1941 he was Instructor in Organic Chemistry at the University of Rochester and then went to DuPont in their research center in Wilmington ( Delaware). There he remained until his retirement in 1979. He was from 1952 Head of Laboratory at the Central Research Department, 1966 Research Director and 1971 Director of the Central Research Department. As this 1977 merged with the development department, he also became director of the newly formed Research and Development Department.

In the context of industrial research (where he first worked on nylon modifications ) he succeeded in the synthesis of some new organic compounds, such as (inspired by the developed DuPont Teflon) tetracyanoethylene.

From 1949 to 1952 he was editor of Organic Syntheses and 1959-1969 editor of Organic Reactions. From 1970 to 1973 he was scientific adviser to Richard Nixon and previously from 1969 to 1972 in the scientific advisory body to the Governor of Delaware. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board and Organic Chemistry at the American Chemical Society. In 1973 he received the Elliott Cresson Medal and the 1968 American Chemical Society Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, the Perkin Medal, 1974. In 1970 he became an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta.

He was a U.S. citizen. Since 1940, he was married to Margaret McDonald, with whom he had four children. His daughter Margaret Etter (d. 1992) was chemistry professor at the University of Minnesota.