While working as a chemist at 3M, parent company of Top 40 supplier 3M/Promotional Markets (asi/91240), Spencer Silver invented acrylate copolymer microspheres.

That might not strike you until you realize that the compound is the sticky adhesive that made possible Post-it Notes, those handy pieces of notepaper that adhere to surfaces as simply as they can be removed from them.

Now, there are more than 3,000 Post-it brand products – all of which are rooted in the scientific legacy Silver leaves behind following his passing at age 80 on May 8 at his home in Minnesota. Silver died following a bout of ventricular tachycardia, a condition in which the lower chambers of the heart (ventricles) beat very quickly.

“Since their introduction in 1980, Post-it Notes have become a ubiquitous office product, first in the form of little canary-yellow pads – billions of which are sold annually – and later also in different hues and sizes, some with much stickier adhesives,” The New York Times reported.

Born in San Antonio as Spencer Ferguson Silver III, Silver earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Colorado. In 1968, he was working at 3M, trying to come up with an adhesive that was so strong it could be used in aircraft construction. While engaged in such research, he invented the adhesive that would be used in Post-it Notes.

Silver patented the adhesive in 1972. Still, it took years and another great mind at 3M to find an end-product application for acrylate copolymer microspheres. Art Fry, a chemical engineer in 3M’s tape division, would ultimately use the adhesive to develop Post-it Notes, a product Fry patented.

3M introduced Post-it Notes nationally around 1980. 3M sells an array of Post-it Note items in the promotional products industry.

“The Post-it Notes took off so rapidly,” Silver told CNN in 2013, “that I think it left a lot of people in marketing and sales gasping a little bit…It was always a self-advertising product.”