Paul J. Flory (1910-1985) was an americain chemist who was known for his amazing amount of work in the field of polymers, or macromolecules. He was a leading pioneer in understanding the behavior of polymers in solution. Among his accomplishments are an original method for computing the probable size of a polymer in good solution, the Flory-Huggins Solution Theory, and the derivation of the Flory exponent, which helps characterize the movement of polymers in solution.

In modeling the position vectors of atoms in macromolecules it is often necessary to convert from Cartesian coordinates (x,y,z) to generalized coordinates. The Flory convention for defining to variables involved is usually employed. For an example, a peptide bond can be described by the x,y,z positions of every atom in this bond or the Flory convention can be used. Here one must know the bond lengths l_i, bond angles θ_i, and the dihedral angles φ_i. Applying a vector conversion from the Cartesian coordinates to the generalized coordinates will describe the same three dimensional structure using the Flory convention.

He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1974.

See also

• Protein Data Bank

External Link

A short autobiography