Henry L. Hsieh was a Phillips Petroleum scientist known for contributions to polymerization chemistry, specifically anionic polymerization. [1] [2]
Hsieh was a native of Shanghai, China. [3] He received his BS Chemistry at the University of Akron in 1954. He then went to Princeton, where he earned a MA in Chemistry in 1956, and a PhD in 1957 in Organic / Polymer chemistry.
After completing his doctoral work, he joined Phillips in 1957 as a research chemist in their rubber synthesis branch. He became an authority on polymerization chemistry, holding 135 patents and publishing more than 50 scientific articles. He was responsible for the development of Solprene synthetic rubbers, K-Resin plastic, Butarez CTL solid rocket fuel binder and Phil-ad VIII multi-grade motor oil additive. In 1974, future Goodyear Medal winner Roderic Quirk worked in Hsieh's anionic polymerization lab. [4] Hsieh's most cited journal article is a review on the kinetics of alkyllithium initiated polymerization. [5]