Kickstart: A pioneer 'determined to put my education to use'

In January 2020, Dow Inc. renamed a building at its headquarters in Midland, Mich., for its first female chemist, Sylvia Stoesser.

Now Chemistry World has a closer look at the woman named on 29 patents and who was key in the invention of styrene. As Rebecca Trager writes, Stoesser was determined to succeed in her field, even if a female scientist was an unexpected hire in 1929.

That meant informing her then-fiance that he needed to make sure Dow hired both of them, not just him.

"I told Wes that if I came to Midland, I would have to have a job. I was determined to put my education to use," Trager wrote, quoting an article in the Sylvia Stoesser collection at the Iowa Women's Archives of the University of Iowa Libraries.

According to Stoesser's daughter Judy, Wesley Stoesser achieved the job offer during a conversation with Dow founder Herbert H. Dow's wife, Grace, telling her his marriage depended on them both getting hired.

She became the only woman and the only Ph.D. in her lab at Dow.

The hits from 2020 keep on coming.

Frank Esposito warned earlier this week that polypropylene resin prices took a leap in December, climbing 14 cents.

Now he's back with updates on a range of other price hikes, including for polyethylene and polystyrene.

Why? Shortages and demand always factor in to price changes, but in 2020 there were also storms and even a government intervention to cut the supply of natural gas to a key plant in Mexico.

He'll go in depth on the issues in his Polymer Points column in the Jan. 11 print issue of Plastics News, plus plan on more discussion in the Polymer Points Live webcast on Jan. 19.

Maybe you're one of those people who sought a refuge from the news of today by watching the time period TV show The Queen's Gambit on Netflix.

In the series, the main character imagines a chess set on the ceiling as she lies in bed. Now a Kentucky hotel has created a room complete with 1960s style. The centerpiece is a larger-than-life upside-down chessboard with pieces made from foam, hanging on the ceiling above the bed, inspired by the protaganist's late-night hallucinatory strategizing, with an arrangement mirroring her final match with Russian grandmaster Vasily Borgov.

The Beth Harmon room at 21c Museum Hotel in Lexington is available at $234 per night, according to our sister paper Advertising Age.