Leo Baekeland - Decline and Death

Decline and Death

As Baekeland got older he became more eccentric, getting into fierce battles with his son and presumptive heir over salary and other issues. He sold the General Bakelite Company to Union Carbide in 1939 and, at his son's prompting, he retired. He became a recluse, eating all of his meals from cans and becoming obsessed with developing an immense tropical garden on his winter estate in Coconut Grove, Florida. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in a sanatorium in Beacon, New York. Baekeland is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

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Famous quotes containing the words decline and, decline and/or death:

    Or else I thought her supernatural;
    As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
    On this foul world in its decline and fall,
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    Or else I thought her supernatural;
    As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
    On this foul world in its decline and fall,
    On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
    Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
    Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave....
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

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