Steven Kistler
After a brief spell working for the Standard Oil Company of California, he returned to academia, teaching chemistry at the College of the Pacific until 1931, when he transferred to the University of Illinois.[2] Whether these experiments were performed at the College of the Pacific, still with limited facilities following the move in 1923 to the new Stockton campus, or at Stanford, where Kistler began pursuing a doctorate in 1927, is a source of some confusion.He left his teaching post at the University of Illinois in 1935 and signed a contract with Monsanto Company in the early 1940s to start developing granular silica aerogel products under the trademark Santocel.Largely used as a flattening agent in paints and for similar uses, the line was discontinued by Monsanto in 1970, probably due to the high cost of manufacture and competition from newer products.[6] He died in Salt Lake City in November 1975, shortly before the resurgence of interest in aerogels caused by the discovery of a less time-consuming method of manufacture by researchers led by Stanislaus Teichner in France.