Spencer Silver

Spencer Ferguson Silver III (February 6, 1941 – May 8, 2021) was an American chemist and inventor who specialized in adhesives. 3M credits him with having devised the adhesive that Arthur Fry used to create Post-it Notes.

Career Silver started his career at 3M's central research laboratory as a senior chemist focused on developing pressure sensitive adhesives.

In 1974, Arthur Fry, a chemical engineer in the tape division at 3M, attended an internal seminar held by Silver, who was promoting his adhesive's properties. Fry regarded it as a potential solution to a practical challenge, that of preventing paper bookmarks from falling out of his hymnal when he sang in church. Fry developed bookmarks using Silver's adhesive, preventing them from leaving residue, and sought to interest others within the 3M company in them. The adhesive notes were initially marketed under the name Post 'n Peel in four cities from 1977 and as Post-it Notes from 1980 throughout the United States. Post-it as we know it was patented by Fry in 1993 as a "repositionable pressure-sensitive adhesive sheet material".

Silver received several awards for his work, including the 1998 American Chemical Society Award for Creative Invention and induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2011.

In 2025, the Post-it Note was included in Pirouette: Turning Points in Design, an exhibition at the MoMA featuring "widely recognized design icons [...] highlighting pivotal moments in design history."

Personal life In 1965 Silver married Linda Martin, a computer programmer whom he met when she was an undergraduate working part time at the University of Colorado Boulder's chemistry department and he was pursuing his PhD at the same university. The couple went on to have two daughters, one of whom predeceased Silver in 2017. He was 80 years old.