Chemist and inventor Patsy O’Connell Sherman is the holder or co-holder of 16 patents and her innovative thinking helped develop Scotchgard™ for the 3M company in the 1950s. According to her biography in the Minnesota Science and Technology Hall of Fame, the young O’Connell took a high school aptitude test which showed her best career choice would that of “housewife”. Knowing that she wanted a career and didn't want to spend her time studying in college only to end up at home, she insisted she be allowed to take the test given to boys, which revealed a much different career path – she would be well-suited to be either a dentist or a scientist. In 1952, O’Connell was the first female to graduate from Gustavus Adolphus College with Bachelor of Science degrees in chemistry and mathematics. After graduating she took a “temp job” (at that time women hired to work in laboratories were considered temporary employees, assuming they would leave to get married and have a family) at Minnesota-based 3M Corporation. She was contracted to assist in developing a new type of fuel line for jet aircraft through the use of fluorochemicals. In 1953 while working on the fuel line project, a lab assistant spilled some of the chemicals she had been experimenting with on her white canvas shoes. Attempts to clean off the spilled drops were unsuccessful, but she noticed that later the area where the chemicals had spilled were clean while other parts of her shoes where dirty. After exhaustive attempts to remove the rubber failed, Sherman realized that the material could be used as a repellant for oil, water, and other solvents. As with many cases during the era, Sherman faced difficulties that none of her male counterparts did – in her case, Patsy Sherman was required to wait for performance results outside of the textile mill during testing of the product due to a rule at that time that banned women from the mill. Despite these challenges, she and fellow scientist Samuel Smith worked together on research and development of a product and on April 13, 1971 received approval for United States Patent 3574791 for “invention of block and graft copolymers containing water-solvatable polar groups and fluoroaliphatic groups.” The fluorochemical polymer that the two developed was marketed by 3M under the trademark name of Scotchgard™. Patsy O’Connell married Hubert Sherman and had children, but she defied the “norm” and remained at 3M her entire career. By the time she retired in 1992, she had advanced through the ranks and was manager of technical development. She received several prestigious honors throughout her career and beyond, including induction into 3M’s Carlton Society which honors the company’s best scientists, the Minnesota Inventors Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

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