Walter Kaminsky has some advice for those going into the chemical and plastics industries: Don't listen to the naysayers.
If Kaminsky had headed the negative comments, then he would not have pursued his work in metallocene catalysts for polyolefins that ended up making a name for himself and eventually resulted in his induction to the Plastics Hall of Fame class of 2024.
"I was surprised. But I must tell you, I had not heard before much of it — only in the case of sports. I know the hall of fame was for sport people," he said from his home in Germany about his induction into the Plastics Hall of Fame.
"The Plastics Hall of Fame, I had maybe heard sometimes a little about it, but not much. So I was really surprised to get the information to get me as a member. It was a great thing," he said.
Kaminsky was happy to spend his career in academia, where he was given the latitude to pursue research in what interested him. Sure, there were opportunities to move into the private sector after he made a name for himself in the world of catalysts and metallocene and resins.
He began as an assistant professor at the University of Hamburg in Germany in 1977, a position he held for two years before becoming a professor for one year at the University of Oldenburg for technical chemistry. He then returned to the University of Hamburg as a full professor starting in 1980, a position he held until 2008.
"I was happy to stay there a long time," he said, and have the flexibility to conduct research as he saw fit and not at the will of a private company.
The university setting allowed Kaminsky to focus on his own work and not worry about what others were doing in the competitive business environment, he explained. This ability gave him the freedom to look deeply into his work.
"If you want to be your own person in your research, you have to stay at your university," he said. "That, for me, was the main point to stay at the university."
Without this ability to sink into research work, Kaminsky said he would not have been able to accomplish his breakthrough work with metallocene catalysts, which gave polyolefins additional properties that allowed them to become more versatile and useful compared with previously used catalysts.
"Professor Kaminsky was regarded as the father of the modern metallocene technology by the polyolefin industry," his nomination form to the hall states.
Kaminsky can easily trace his interest in science back to his curiosity as a child, where he was interested in both nature and how things worked, he remembered. Living near a forest allowed him to explore natural history and sparked a lifelong willingness to learn and teach.
Kaminsky retired in 2006, but not really, as it took his university another two years to find his replacement. Not wanting to leave students in a lurch, he agreed to stay on until 2008, when his successor was found.
Since leaving the University of Hamburg, Kaminsky has worked to develop pyrolysis technology for waste plastics.
Despite his decades in academia and research, Kaminsky said he does not miss the work. His ability to travel the world as a guest speaker and professor after leaving full-time work helped ease him into retirement.
He wants to be remembered as an active person who had a curiosity about many things, a professor who was open to inquiry from students and one who worked to set those students up for success in their own careers.
"I liked to be free in my research field, and I wanted to study with students new research fields in the plastics area which could take a long time and it was not sure if this can ever be used in industry. This you can do only if you are independent of an industry structure. That was the main point for me to stay at the university. Also to have contact with young people which you can teach and which you can give ideas what could be done in the future, which can be important," Kaminsky said.
Researchers, he said, cannot be afraid to dive into their subject matter for fear of failure. The work requires patience.
Because he had the freedom to conduct his research as part of his job, Kaminsky said working at the university never really felt like a job. He was happy to arrive in the morning and spend the hours needed. He credits his wife, Karin, for his success because of her understanding of the long hours needed at work as well as the international travel that kept him away from home for long stretches. Without her support, Kaminsky said, he could not have been successful.
"I was happy to stay there a long time," he said about his work life. "To come to new things ... you have to work strongly in that area. You have to work deep and [have] longer concentration."
Not everything will work in research, and he said that's all right. The key is not to listen to those who would dissuade the work just because of a new approach. Kaminsky said he would not have made his breakthroughs in catalysts if he listened to others.
"That, for me, is always the point. For me, I like to go new ways. It's important to open new fields in the research field if you stay at the university as a researcher," he said. "Such an open field, I wanted to do and have a deeper look.
"I thought chemistry is a very open field," he said.
James Stevens, a 36-year employee of Dow, wrote a letter of support for Kaminsky's inclusion into the Plastics Hall of Fame. Stevens was the Dow Distinguished Fellow in the Core Research and Development Department, the highest position for a research scientist at the company, he said in his letter.
Over his career, Stevens saw firsthand, the impact of Kaminsky's work.
"Professor Kaminsky's pioneering discovery of what are now called 'Kaminsky catalysts' sparked a revolution that has been exploited by essentially every polyolefin producer on the planet, who continue to innovate new products," Stevens wrote.
"Prior to Kaminsky's pioneering discoveries, polyolefin plastics and elastomers were produced using poorly understood and difficult-to-control heterogeneous catalysts, which had relatively low efficiency, and hence relatively high cost," he continued.
"Kaminsky made the breakthrough discovery that certain metallocenes could be activated using an aluminum compound being investigated by one of his colleagues at the University of Hamburg, professor Hansjorg Sinn, called alumoxane," he said.
"Kaminsky's discovery sparked a revolution in polyolefin that continues to this day," Stevens said. "Professor Walter Kaminsky's discoveries have revolutionized the production of olefin plastics worldwide, with applications that have touched the lives of humanity globally."