If you've rushed to work lately without having to iron your permanent press shirt, you can thank Dr. Ruth Benerito. Prior to her death in 2013 at the age of 97, Dr. Benerito helped perfect wrinkle-free cotton, also known as permanent press. Developing wrinkle-free cotton was long-considered a challenging chemical problem, since cotton's tendency to wrinkle is inscribed in its DNA. Dr. Benerito was often hailed as the sole inventor of wrinkle-free cotton, and in 2008 she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
But Dr. Benerito frequently made a point of modestly but firmly reminding people that other scientists also deserved credit for permanent press. For instance, in 2004 she appeared in an interview and said:
I don't like it to be said that I invented wash-wear, because there were any number of people working on it, and there are various processes by which you give cotton those properties. No one person discovered it or was responsible for it. But I contributed to new processes of doing it.
It's a reminder that behind big names and big developments are usually a host of unnamed people, whose hard work enabled the breakthrough. A good idea is rarely an individual achievement. It's true in the worlds of science and invention. It's also true in the church.
