Michael Szwarc

Szwarc was born Mojżesz Szwarc into a Polish Jewish family in Będzin, trained as an engineer in Warsaw, and emigrated to Mandatory Palestine, earning a doctorate at the Hebrew University before further work in Britain and the United States. In 1956 he discovered 'living polymerization,' in which growing polymer chains keep their reactive ends after the reaction, giving chemists unprecedented control over polymer size and architecture. The method underlies much of modern materials science; he received the Kyoto Prize in 1991.