Roy J. Plunkett discovered Teflon at the DuPont Jackson Laboratory in New Jersey on April 6, 1938 . Roy J. Plunkett was born on June 26, 1910, in New Carlisle, Ohio. Plunkett belonged to a poor Ohio farmer family, he attended the Manchester College. He received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from the Manchester College in the year 1932 and his doctoral degree in chemistry from The Ohio State University in the year 1936. He was the head of the chemist who participated in the gasoline additive Tetra-ethyl lead at DuPont's Chambers Works from the year 1939 to 1952. After that, he was assigned to be head of Freon production at the DuPont before retiring in the year 1975. Plunkett joined Du Pont as a research chemist at the Jackson Laboratory, New Jersey in 1936. Less than two years later, he had made his discovery of Teflon tetrafluoroethylene resin--a discovery he himself described as accidental. In 1939 he was promoted to chemical supervisor for the manufacture of tetra-ethyl lead at the largest Du Pont plant of that time. He continued to work in administration there until 1952. Later he directed to operations for Du Pont's Freon Products Division. Plunkett retired from Du Pont in 1975, and died in 1994. Plunkett's management of research, development, and production efforts at DuPont resulted in the creation of lots of new products and processes that have become widely used in the refrigeration, aerosol, electronic, plastics, and aerospace industries. Many of these are considered to be of critical importance to national defense.