Professor Frank Ko is a recognized expert on the production, braiding and weaving of textile fibers, with strong interests in polymer science. He and I worked together in the mid 1990s, in a cooperative research effort supported by the US Army, on new polymer fibers, including nanofibers. Our complementary experience and knowledge were synergistic.

Early information about nanofibers made by electrospinning was sequestered in the research departments of a few filter manufacturers, and in the notebooks and memories of engineers from the former Soviet Union, who designed and manufactured gas masks. Since the 1930 patents of A. Formhals, little research on nanofibers was published except for a paper by P. K. Baumgarten in 1971 and papers by R. St. J. Manley in 1981, until my publications that began in 1995, with graduate student Jayesh Doshi.

Other polymer scientists soon began to develop their interests in electrospinning and nanofibers. The number of publications on nanofibers grew exponentially. By 2003, a paper on this subject, with mathematical models of co-author Alexander Yarin, was credited as “the frequently cited paper in a fast moving front of materials science,” a part of materials science previously left almost entirely to scientists in industrial textile fiber laboratories. Activity in the form of research and nanofiber manufacturing in the filtration industry, development of other useful products, and the establishment of startup companies, has ramified into a multitude of industries and now extends throughout the world.