James C. Stevens

James Carl Stevens
BornJuly 27, 1953
NationalityAmerican
Alma materThe College of Wooster (B.A. in Chemistry, 1975)
Ohio State University (Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry, 1979)
Known forThe discovery and commercialization of a number of significant families of polymers in widespread commercial use today.
AwardsPerkin Medal (2006)
US National Inventor of the Year (1994)
Election to the US National Academy of Engineering (2011)
Scientific career
FieldsAmerican Industrial Chemist
InstitutionsThe Dow Chemical Company
Thesis Synthetic and Physical Inorganic chemistry of monomeric molecular oxygen complexes  (1979)
Doctoral advisorDaryle Busch

James Carl Stevens (born July 27, 1953), a chemist, was the first Distinguished Fellow, at the Dow Chemical Company, retiring in January 2015. His area of expertise is organometallic chemistry and his primary field of research is in the area of polyolefin catalysis, particularly in the area of polyethylene, polypropylene, ethylene/styrene copolymers, and the combinatorial discovery of organometallic single-site catalysts. Stevens major contributions have come in the discovery and commercial implementation of single-site polyolefin catalysts. He invented and led the commercialization of constrained geometry catalyst for the polymerization of olefins. These have been commercialized by Dow as a number of polymers, elastomers and plostomers.

Stevens led efforts in the development of photovoltaic materials based on earth abundant elements prior to his retirement.