Stephanie Kwolek
(Kevlar)

Stephie Kwolek was one of two children born to Polish immigrant parents in the Pittsburgh suburb of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, in 1923. The grade school she attended was small enough to require her classroom be shared by two different grades, which she found to be an advantage; as Kwolek's love of science grew, she easily outpaced even the older children across the room. Her father, John Kwolek, died when she was ten years old. He was a naturalist by avocation, and Kwolek spent hours with him, as a child, exploring the natural world. They would spend afternoons together exploring the woods nearby, collecting plants and observing animals that they would later name and characterize in a scrapbook. She attributed her interest in science to him and an interest in fashion design to her mother Nellie (née Zajdel), who worked as a seamstress. Her mother told her that she was too much of a perfectionist to work a career in fashion, so Stephanie decided to become a physician.

In 1946, Stephanie earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Margaret Morrison Carnegie College of Carnegie Mellon University. She had planned to become a physician and hoped she could earn enough money from a temporary job in a chemistry-related field to attend medical school.