L.C. "Bud" Rubens
Dow Chemical Company
Inducted 2000
C. “Bud” Rubens was trained as a chemical engineer who spent his entire career with the Dow Chemical Company. At Dow, he worked on developing various products, including novel foam technologies. Rubens invented Etha-Foam™ polyethylene foam and pioneered organic blowing agents, which have been applied to almost all polymeric foam products, including Styrofoam™ and polyurethane foams. He also developed styrene / di-vinyl benzene copolymer, leading to the first low-loss dielectric, weather-stable plastics for early radar systems. Rubens also contributed to developing glass fiber-reinforced unsaturated polyester resin for body armor applications. He is an inventor on 58 U.S. patents.
Dow awarded Rubens the first Hubert H. Dow Gold Medal in 1979 and was named a Dow Research Fellow in 1982. That same year, the company named him Inventor of the Year for his work on composite foam structures. Rubens retired from Dow Chemical in 1986 after 46 years of service.
Rubens was an active Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) member and was honored with an Outstanding Achievement Award by the Thermoplastic Materials and Foams Division of SPE in 1994.
Areas of Expertise:
Plastic Materials