[camptzak]

So I was taking a polymer synth and mech class once, and the teacher is teaching us about ziegler natta polymerization of alkyl olefins.
he starts by saying that Ziegler was the one who discovered the catalyst, and had suspected himself that the olefin polymerization was catalyzed by this inorganic reagent. He told his colleague Natta about his hypothesis that the inorganic reagent was the catalyst for this polymerization.
Natta then began publishing papers on the subject without properly citing Ziegler. When Ziegler confronted him about this he said "what? I discovered this independently!" This was the last time Ziegler ever spoke directly to Natta.
My teacher also said there was a court case Ziegler v. Natta in which eventually in the nineties they ruled in favor of Ziegler. However the name had stuck as the Ziegler-Natta catalyst.
He ended the introduction by putting a dark X through Natta's name.

He said there is a book that documents all this, but I cant find anything online that alludes to this. Does anyone know the book title? Does anyone know anything about this?

[fledarmus]

I haven't found a free source to the decision, but if you have access to a law library or search engine, you might want to read Ziegler v. Natta, 157 USPQ 400 (SDNY 1968). It appears that both Ziegler and Natta spent years litigating patents in a variety of courts - a search in Google Scholar under legal documents has their names on a wide variety of early olefin cases.