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While earlier attempts to produce satisfactory synthetic rubber from isoprene were unsuccessful, in 1955 American chemist Samuel Emmett Horne Jr. (b. 1924) prepared 98 percent cis -1,4-polyisoprene via the stereospecific polymerization of isoprene. Horne's product differs from natural rubber only in that it contains a small amount of cis -1,2-polyisoprene, but it is indistinguishable from natural rubber in physical properties. First produced in 1961, BR (for butadiene rubber), a rubberlike polymer that is almost exclusively cis -1,4-polybutadiene, when blended with natural or SBR rubber, has been used for tire treads.
