Coover's discovery of cyanoacrylates, a class of chemicals with
powerful adhesive properties, opened the door to a wide range
of industrial, consumer, and medical applications, most notably
as superglue. While working as a research chemist at Eastman Kodak
during World War II, Coover worked with cyanoacrylates in an effort
to produce an optically clear plastic to use for precision gunsights.
These chemicals proved to be unsuited to this particular task,
but Coover recognized their potential applications as an adhesive.
the Vietnam War, field surgeons made dramatic use of cyanoacrylate
by spraying it on potentially fatal wounds to stop bleeding instantly,
thus allowing them to treat the wounds later in a conventional
manner. Cyanoacrylate adhesives are currently used for medical
procedures such as performing sutureless surgery to rejoin veins
and arteries, sealing punctures or lesions, and sealing bleeding
Harry Coover was born in Newark, Delaware. He received his B.S.
from Hobart College and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell University.
Coover, who holds 460 patents, is also responsible for advances
in the fields of graft polymerization, organophosphorus chemistry,
and olefin polymerization.