Born: 20 March 1935, United States
Died: 16 June 1995
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
Industrial research chemist Bettye Washington Greene was an early African American pioneer in science. She was the first African American female Ph.D. chemist to work in a professional position at the Dow Chemical Company, where she researched latex and polymers.
Born in Forth Worth, Texas, Bettye attended segregated public schools, graduating from I.M. Terrell High School around 1952. She graduated from Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1955 with a B.S. in chemistry. The same year, she married veteran Air Force Captain William Miller Greene and went on to earn her Ph.D in physical chemistry at Wayne State University in Detroit, while also teaching undergraduate chemistry. Her doctoral dissertation, published in 1965, was titled “Determination of particle size distributions in emulsions by light scattering”.
That year, Dr Greene joined the Dow Chemical Company’s E. C. Britton Research Laboratory, where she researched colloid and latex chemistry, including interactions between latex and paper. She also served as a consultant on Polymers issues in the Saran Research Laboratory and often worked with the Styrene Butadiene (SB) Latex group. She was the first African-American woman to be employed at the company in a professional position and would work for Dow until her retirement in 1990.
In 1970, Dr. Greene was promoted to senior research chemist. In 1973, she joined the Designed Polymers Research Division to develop polymers that could improve latex. She was promoted to senior research specialist in 1975. Dr Greene published several papers examining different properties that contribute to the redispersement of latex, as well as works about methodologies for determining the surface tension of liquids or solutions.
Dr. Greene filed for several patents during her career at Dow Chemical. Her patents included a latex-based adhesive that used a carboxylic acid copolymerizing agent, and latex polymers with phosphates used as coatings. Her patents include:
1985: “Stable latexes containing phosphorus surface groups” describing a method of preparing a paper coating composition comprising the addition of from about 2 to about 30 percent of a modified latex containing phosphorus surface groups.
1986: “Composite sheet prepared with stable latexes containing phosphorus surface groups”, also employing emulsion polymerization techniques for preparing modified latex.
1990: “Latex based adhesive prepared by emulsion polymerization” for the invention of a latex-based, pressure-sensitive adhesive for coating conventional substrates to form an adhesive tape.