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In retrospect

Sixty years of living polymers

In the 1950s, the discovery of a class of 'living' polymerization reaction revolutionized the field of polymer science by providing a way of controlling the molecular-weight distribution of polymers. The effects reverberate to this day.

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Figure 1: Living polymerization reactions allow control of polymeric structures.

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Correspondence to Gary Patterson.

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Patterson, G. Sixty years of living polymers. Nature 536, 276–277 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/536276a

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