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Otto Wichterle—Inventor of the First Soft Contact Lenses

2016; Elsevier BV; Volume: 91; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.mayocp.2016.01.016

1942-5546

Robert A. Kyle, David P. Steensma, Marc A. Shampo,

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Born in Prostějov, Moravia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), on October 27, 1913, Otto Wichterle preferred a scientific career to work in his father's successful farm machinery factory. Following high school graduation in Prostějov, he studied chemistry at the Chemical and Technological Faculty of the Czech Technical University in Prague, graduating in 1936. He continued at the University and completed a doctoral thesis in chemistry in 1939. However, he was not allowed to continue at the University after 1939, because Germany had seized Czechoslovakia and considered Wichterle “politically unreliable.” Wichterle was able to obtain work in a research institute at the Bat'a Shoe Company in Zlin, where he continued his investigations in the chemistry of plastics. Two years later he developed a procedure to make a synthetic polyamide fiber named silon, which was similar to nylon − that had been discovered in 1938 in the United States − but of which Wichterle was unaware. He was imprisoned by the Gestapo in 1942 for a few months but then released. Following World War II, he returned to the Czech Technical University, where he taught organic and inorganic chemistry, and wrote popular textbooks in both fields. He obtained a second doctorate in 1949 on the technology of plastics. Three years later, at age 39, he became Dean of the newly established Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague, but was forced to vacate his position after a political purge by Czechoslovakia's Communist leadership in 1958. That same year, a research center for synthetic polymers named Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences was established with Wichterle as director. He was known as a fine mentor and once told his students, “Those of you who do not know more about your project than your supervisor within one year should leave at that time. Your supervisor has about ten graduate students and many other duties. You would not like to admit that you are ten times less efficient.” He worked on the synthesis of cross-linked hydrophilic gels in order to find a material suitable for permanent contact with living tissues. This work resulted in a gel, poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (PHEMA), which absorbed up to 40% of water and was non-irritating. By Christmas 1961, he had succeeded in producing four hydrogel contact lenses with an instrument made from a child's building kit (similar to an erector set) and a phonograph motor. These were to be the world's first soft lenses. (Hard lenses made of glass had been developed in the 1880s and were succeeded by hard Plexiglas lenses in the 1930s.) He first tried the lenses in his own eyes and found that they were comfortable. He then developed a centrifugal casting procedure to mass produce lenses by spin casting. The US National Patent Development Corporation (NPDC) bought the American rights for production of the new lenses from the Czechoslovak government for $330,000 and then sublicensed the patent to the Bausch and Lomb Corporation. Wichterle became well known because of his international activities, including presentations at congresses of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. He filed approximately 180 patents pertaining to his work in organic synthesis, polymerization, production methods, and measuring devices. He was expelled from the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry in 1970 because he had signed “The Two Thousand Words,” a manifesto supporting continuation of the democratization that had begun during the Prague Spring of 1968. He resumed his scientific activities following the Velvet Revolution in 1989, and he was later elected president of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. An asteroid (#3899) was named after Wichterle in 1993. According to his grandson, Wichterle received no more than one-tenth of 1% of what the Czechoslovak government had been paid for his patent rights for contact lenses. However, he did not complain and never regretted not gaining wealth from his inventions. He led a comfortable life and enjoyed traveling and visiting other scientists throughout the world. During the last year of his life he had a heart attack and a stroke, and died in his sleep on August 18, 1998. He was honored on a postage stamp (Scott #3590) issued October 16, 2013, by the Czech Republic to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth.