Otto Wichterle

Czech chemist

• Born: October 27, 1913
• Birthplace: Prostějov, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Czech Republic)
• Died: August 18, 1998
• Place of death: Sdradisko, Czech Republic

Wichterle discovered the hydrogel polyhydroxyethyl methacrylate (poly-HEMA), a synthetic polymer (plastic) that could absorb and retain water, and developed a method for molding it into flexible, soft contact lenses. He patented dozens of types of plastics and methods for their use or manufacture, and he wrote extensively on organic and inorganic chemistry, polymer science, and medical uses for plastics.

Primary field: Chemistry

Primary invention: Soft contact lenses

Early Life

Otto Wichterle (OT-oh VIHK-tur-leh) was the youngest of five children born to Karel, co-owner of a farm machinery plant, and Slávka, a well-educated housewife. When he was six years old, Wichterle nearly drowned after falling into an open sewer, and afterward remained ill; diagnosed with an enlarged heart, he was expected to die within the year. Thinking him too sick to attend school, his parents arranged for him to be tutored at home. Two years later, Wichterle seemed healthy enough to return to school; in 1922, at the age of eight, he passed entrance examinations that placed him in classes with children three years older than himself. Wichterle endured some bullying but quickly adjusted, becoming involved in school sports and taking music lessons in addition to his regular studies.

After graduating from high school, Wichterle planned to study mechanical engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague, but a friend advised him that he would have more opportunity to do research, and to study with better scientists, in the university’s chemical engineering department. In 1936, he obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry from the university and remained there as a lecturer until November, 1939, when the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia and closed all its universities.

Life’s Work

Realizing that German forces were arresting university professors, Wichterle left the university but continued his research at the Bata Chemistry Research Institute in Zlín, where he developed a method for spinning synthetic nylon fibers that could be used in textile production. After World War II, he returned to Czech Technical University and was appointed a professor of macromolecular chemistry there in 1949. Always concerned with the quality of education in chemistry, Wichterle soon clashed with the administration over his teaching methods, the subjects he covered in classes, and the very purpose of education.

In 1952, Wichterle, then on the faculty of Prague’s new University of Chemical Technology, met by chance a government official who worked on finding medical uses for plastics. Their brief conversation inspired Wichterle with several ideas for using hydrophilic polymers (plastics that could hold water) as substitutes or enhancements for human tissue. Wichterle immediately filed a patent on these types of water-permeable plastics and their possible uses, including an idea that they could be used to make soft contact lenses.

The next year, Wichterle and his colleague Drahoslav Lim patented polyhydroxyethyl methacrylate (poly-HEMA) gel, a transparent plastic that was nearly half water. Wichterle worked with ways to form the gel into a usable contact lens and in 1957 was able to briefly wear a thick, ragged-edged prototype lens in his own eye.

The University of Chemical Technology’s communist administration fired Wichterle in 1958, and he immediately was offered the directorship of a new research institution, the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry, at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. He was not allowed to continue his research on hydrophilic plastics at the institute, so Wichterle moved his project to a separate laboratory, where soft contact lenses with smooth edges were formed in glass molds, although the methods were time-consuming. In 1959, several patients were experimentally fitted with the lenses. Wichterle coauthored an article about his groundbreaking work with water-retaining plastics in the journal Nature in January, 1960; however, that year the Ministry of Health ceased funding for the project because the lenses could not yet be mass-produced.

Wichterle continued his research at home. Combining pieces of laboratory equipment taken from the University of Chemical Technology, parts from an erector set belonging to his children, and a generator from his son’sbicycle, he developed a method for “spin casting” the lenses, forming them from softened plastic on rotating molds. On Christmas Day of 1961, he tested four of his homemade lenses on hospital patients and found that, although their vision was not improved, the patients could wear the lenses easily and could at least see through them.

Wichterle upgraded his homemade equipment, replacing the bicycle generator with parts from a record player, and exposing the lenses to ultraviolet rays filtered through a piece of glass taken from one of his bookshelves. Between January and April of 1962, Wichterle and his wife, Linda, a physician, made approximately fifty-five hundred contact lenses. As these lenses were tested and government officials learned of the project’s economic potential, Wichterle was invited to resume his research at the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry. In 1963, looking for a way to manufacture contact lenses on the same type of machinery used to made rigid lenses, Wichterle created and patented a xerogel, a plastic that could be formed into lenses while dry, then allowed to absorb water.

In 1964, Wichterle traveled to the United States to promote the soft contact lens; as part of his presentation, he would take a soft lens from his own eye, drop it on the floor, step on it, put it in his mouth to clean it with saliva, and then replace it in his eye. In 1965, an American investment company, the National Patent Development Corporation (NPDC), partnered with Wichterle and were licensed to mass-produce soft lenses once the product and manufacturing process were perfected. In 1966, the NPDC licensed Bausch and Lomb to produce the lenses, and soft contacts were first offered to the American public in 1971.

In 1968, Wichterle became director of the Macromolecular Division of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and traveled extensively, looking for further medicinal applications for hydrogels. The same year, during the Prague Spring reform movement, Wichterle was among sixty Czech activists who signed the “Two Thousand Words” manifesto, a document of protest against Czechoslovakia’s communist leadership. In August, 1968, the Soviet Union occupied Czechoslovakia; to avoid arrest, Wichterle left the country. He returned to Prague in September, only to be removed once again from his professional position.

Wichterle’s activities and contacts were limited, and he continued working in isolation, receiving the International Eye Research Foundation Prize (1978) and the American Optical Society Wood Prize (1983). In 1989, at the age of seventy-six, Wichterle was elected president of Czechoslovakia’s Academy of Sciences and received the American Society of Plastic Engineers Hyatt Prize (1989). He retired from the Academy of Sciences after three years. Wichterle died in his sleep in 1998 at the age of eighty-four, having suffered a heart attack and a stroke during the previous year.

Impact

Wichterle was a pioneer in his approach to pure and applied sciences, simultaneously developing scientific theories and practical applications. He also pioneered the idea that synthetic materials could be made to imitate living tissues and used for medical implants.

Inspired by chance to work with plastics for medical applications, Wichterle laid a foundation for future developments in biomedical materials. He persevered in developing his ideas in spite of academic rivalries, political opposition, lack of funding for research, and loss of personal income. In pursuit of a product that seemed to serve only cosmetic purposes, Wichterle produced contact lenses that could be used in situations where rigid lenses or eyeglasses were impractical; his brilliant and innovative use of materials at hand to manufacture thousands of prototype lenses proved that mass manufacture of the lenses was possible. Soft contact lenses are invaluable in professional sports, occupations that place wearers in humid or particle-heavy environments and in military operations where specialized headgear and equipment prevent the use of eyeglasses. At the time of Wichterle’s death, an estimated 100 million people worldwide were using soft contact lenses.

Bibliography

Kalausova, Sonia. “Czech Inventions.” New Presence: The Prague Journal of Central European Affairs 11, no. 1 (Winter, 2007): 52-55. In addition to Wichterle’s career and political persecution, the article covers the invention of the sugar cube and the explosive Semtex. Includes a list of twenty-one Czech inventors.

Kopeček, Jindřich. “Otto Wichterle (1913-98): Pioneer of Biomedical Polymers.” Nature 395 (September 24, 1998): 332. Wichterle’s former student traces the inventor’s career and details his contributions to biomedical chemistry; discusses expanded and ongoing use of hydrogels in medicine, founded on technologies Wichterle pioneered in the 1960’s.

Postrel, Virginia. “The Spirit of Play.” Forbes 162 (September 21, 1998): 102. Brief commentary on Wichterle’s pleasure in solving material problems and his perseverance in spite of political persecution, career setbacks, and skepticism, an example of innovation and progress driven not by necessity but by the inventor’s personal satisfaction in his work.

Schaeffer, Jack, and Jan Beiting. “Contact Lens Pioneers.” Review of Optometry 144, no. 7 (July 15, 2007): 28-34. Describes the contributions to contact lens development by William Feinbloom (1904-1985), Kevin Tuohy (1921-1968), Newton Wesley (1917-), Wichterle, and Robert Morrison (1924-). Includes a time line covering 1508-1971.

Wichterle, Otto. Recollections. Translated by Blažena Kukulišová. Prague: Ideu Repro, 1994. Organized by topic rather than chronologically. Wichterle dispassionately covers the development of his work with contact lenses, his efforts to promote and protect his ideas, and the academic rivalries and political conflicts that affected his career. Includes extensive quotes from Wichterle’s 1968 political speeches.