abstract:Polywater was a hypothetical polymerized form of water that was the subject of much scientific controversy during the late 1960s. By 1969 the popular press had taken notice, to the point that it was used as a plot device in Star Trek, and sparked fears of a "polywater gap" in the USA.
Otto Wichterle, when a professor of chemistry in Prague in the 1950s, had discovered a polymer called hydrogel poly-hydroxyethyl methacrylate, with its affinity for water.