Hermann F. Mark

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Hermann Franz Mark , also Herman Francis Mark , (born May 3, 1895 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; † April 6, 1992 in Austin / Texas ), Austrian -US chemist , is considered to be one of the main founders of modern polymer science .

biography

HF Mark was born in Vienna as the eldest of three children of the doctor Hermann Carl Mark and his wife Lili (née Müller). Mark became interested in the natural sciences from an early age - strongly influenced by his teacher Franz Hlawary, who taught him mathematics and physics. At the age of 12, he and a friend whose father taught natural sciences there visited the laboratories of the University of Vienna . After this stimulating visit, they both experimented with chemicals that their fathers had access to.

After graduating from school, Mark initially served in the First World War as an officer in the Imperial and Royal Kaiserschützen Regiment No. II of the Austro-Hungarian Army and was highly decorated there. During the First World War - during a convalescence leave as a result of a war injury - Mark began studying chemistry at the University of Vienna and ultimately received his doctorate in chemistry in 1921 “summa cum laude”. In the same year he went to the University of Berlin as an assistant with his doctoral supervisor Wilhelm Schlenk , where he succeeded the Nobel Prize winner Emil Fischer . Just one year later, Fritz Haber , discoverer of ammonia synthesis and director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry (KWI, today Fritz Haber Institute ), invited HF Mark to the newly founded Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for To cooperate with fiber chemistry; Mark then moved to Berlin-Dahlem with his wife Mimi.

At the KWI in Berlin, a talented group of scientists researched molecular fiber structures with the help of the then new methods of X-ray diffractometry and ultramicroscopy . The researchers quickly realized that X-ray diffraction was a suitable tool for crystal structure studies. During his five years in Berlin, Mark became a crystallographic expert.

In 1926 the director of the research laboratory of IG Farbenindustrie (later BASF ) in Ludwigshafen am Rhein , Kurt Heinrich Meyer , offered him a position as deputy research director. For about 5 years he and Meyer continued his x-ray investigations to determine the structure of polymers (silk, chitin, rubber, cellulose, etc.). The realization that substances such as cellulose and silk fibroin consist of long-chain molecules ("macromolecules"), represented by Hermann Staudinger , whose theory of macromolecules was heavily controversial at the time, was disputed by Mark and Meyer (1928) (after Mark's at that time In theory, cellulose was made up of chains of around 30 to 50 glucose molecules, with around 40 to 50 of these chains forming micelles ). Staudinger saw cellulose as an analogue of polyoxymethylene . He received strong criticism for this at the time, as rubber, for example, was generally viewed as a colloid-like mixture of smaller units that were bound by van der Waal's forces. Mark and Meyer took a middle position and were embroiled in a heated controversy with Staudinger. It was not until 1935 that Mark and Meyer fully accepted Staudinger's theory of macromolecules. In 1934 he and Eugene Guth published pioneering work on the kinetic theory of polymer elasticity. Linus Pauling visited Mark and Meyer's laboratory around 1930 and was very impressed.

In addition to this basic scientific work, Mark also dealt with the practical application of polymer materials by attempting the commercialization of polystyrene , polyvinyl chloride , polyvinyl alcohol and the first synthetic rubbers for the first time. Mark helped IG Farbenindustrie to become one of the leading manufacturers of new polymers and co-polymers. He completed his habilitation at the Technical University of Karlsruhe and worked there as an adjunct professor. He inspired Edward Teller , who studied there. He turned down an offer to succeed Arnold Eucken in Breslau.

After the National Socialists came to power in Germany in 1933, Mark, whose father was Jewish, followed his director's advice and went to the University of Vienna as a professor of physical chemistry . During the six years in Vienna he developed a new curriculum for polymer chemistry and continued his research in the field of macromolecules. He also represented the new polymer science internationally, to the chagrin of Staudinger, who had stayed in Germany and was not allowed to travel abroad. He was a member of the education committee and chairman of the wood utilization committee in the Austrian Ministry of Commerce. After Austria was annexed to Germany in 1938, he was briefly arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo on March 12th (he had held a wake at the coffin of the murdered Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss and helped Jews like Max Perutz to escape). Mark fled with his family in April Switzerland and France to England, from where he took a ship to Canada, where he first worked in the paper industry in Hawkesbury (Ontario) near Montreal, but soon made it to the USA via Du Pont.

As Herman Francis Mark, he entered the Polytechnic Institute of New York in Brooklyn in 1940 - first as an associate professor, two years later as a full professor; In addition to this activity, he also worked for DuPont as an appraiser and consultant.

In 1944, Mark founded the Institute of Polymer Research at the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn - the first research facility in the USA devoted exclusively to polymer research; he was director of this institute until 1964.

Hermann Mark died on April 6, 1992 in his son's house in Austin (Texas); his urn was buried at the Matzleinsdorf cemetery in Vienna.

Mark carried out research in the field of suspension, emulsion and mixed polymerisation, vinyl polymers and polyamides, and examined the chemical and physical properties of high polymers. His work on polymerization mechanisms, particularly photopolymerization, solid-phase polymerization and high-speed polymerization, was groundbreaking; no less important is his scientific activity in the area of ​​structure elucidation and the determination of the molecular mass of polymers. During his academic career, Mark wrote more than 600 academic publications.

He is also known as the editor of the Encyclopedia of Polymer Science and Technology, which is now in its fourth edition (2007). He was co-founder and editor of the Journal of Polymer Science (first in 1945 as Polymer Bulletin at Interscience ) and founded the monograph series High Polymers and Related Substances at Interscience in 1940 (the then newly founded publisher gained much of its reputation through its collaboration with Mark) .

His son Hans Mark held high positions in NASA and in the US military space program.

Honors and memberships

In 1965 he became a foreign member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, in 1956 a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1961 a member of the National Academy of Sciences . He received numerous honorary doctorates.

He has received numerous orders, medals of honor and awards as well as around 20 honorary doctorates worldwide. Among other things, he was co-founder of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovoth ( Israel ), chairman of the newly established commission for macromolecules of the "International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry" ( IUPAC ) and co-founder of several polymer departments at universities and research institutions around the world, such as B. in India, Japan and the USSR.

On the occasion of his 80th birthday, the Hermann F. Mark Chair for Polymer Science was established at the Polytechnical Institute in Brooklyn.

Hermann Mark had never lost contact with Austria: Immediately after the end of the Second World War , he resumed contact and was instrumental in building up a number of Austrian industrial companies. In 1978 he also presented the 10-part television program “All life is chemistry”, written by the Austrian author and historian Hellmut Andics and produced by ORF.

In 1965 HF Mark took over the patronage of the Austrian Plastics Institute , a section of the Austrian Research Institute for Chemistry and Technology (OFI), which at that time was still operating as the Chemical Research Institute of the Austrian Economy. On the occasion of his 80th birthday in 1975, the OFI donated the "Hermann F. Mark Medal" - an award that has been given annually to prominent figures in polymer science and the plastics industry ever since.

In 2009 the Hermann-Mark-Gasse in Vienna- Favoriten (10th district) was named after him.

Fonts

Books:

  • Kurt Meyer, F. Mark: The structure of high molecular weight organic natural substances, Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, Leipzig 1930
  • Kurt H. Meyer, Hermann F. Mark: High polymer chemistry. A teaching and handbook for chemists and biologists. 1st edition. Volume 1: General principles of high polymer chemistry; Volume 2: The high polymer compounds. Academic publishing company Becker & Erler, Leipzig 1937, 1940
  • Mark, K. Sinclair, JE Woods: Physical Chemistry of high polymeric systems, Interscience 1940
  • Mark, AV Tobolsky: Physical Chemistry of High Polymeric Systems, New York: Interscience 1940
  • Mark, RAV Raff: High polymeric reactions, their theory and practice, Interscience 1941
  • Mark, ER Blout, WP Hohenstein: Monomers, Interscience 1949
  • Mark, NG Gaylord: Linear and stereoregular addition polymers, Interscience 1959
  • Mark, T. Alfrey, JJ Bohrer: Copolymerization, Interscience 1952
  • Mark, SM Atlas, E. Cernia: Man made fibers, Interscience 1967
  • Mark, NS Wooding, SM Atlas: Chemical aftertreatment of textiles, New York 1971
  • Mark: Giant Molecules, Time Life 1966
  • Mark, AV Tobolsky: Polymer science and materials, John Wiley 1971

Essays:

  • Mark: The determination of particle size by the use of X-rays, Transactions of the Faraday Society, Volume 25, 1929, pp. 387-389
  • Mark: About the structure of high polymer substances, Scientia, Volume 51, 1932, pp. 405-421
  • Mark, E. Guth: Statistical Theory of Rubber Elasticity, Zeitschrift für Elektrochemie, Volume 43, 1937, pp. 683-686
  • Mark, Kurt Meyer: About the construction of the crystallized portion of cellulose, reports of the German Chemical Society, Volume 61, 1928, pp. 593–614
  • Mark, Kurt Meyer: About the structure of the silk fibroin, reports of the German Chemical Society, Volume 61, 1928, pp. 1932-1936
  • Mark, Kurt Meyer: About the structure of chitin, reports of the German Chemical Society, Volume 61, 1928, pp. 1936-1939
  • Mark, Kurt Meyer: About rubber. Reports of the German Chemical Society, Volume 61, 1928, pp. 1939-1949
  • Mark: From the early days of macromolecular chemistry, Die Naturwissenschaften, Volume 67, 1980, pp. 477-483

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Graeme K. Hunter, Vital Forces. The discovery of the molecular basis of life, Academic Press 2000, p. 179
  2. ↑ Claus Priesner: H. Staudinger, H. Mark and KH Meyer, theses on the size and structure of macromolecules. Causes and background of an academic dispute, Verlag Chemie 1980
  3. ↑ Guth, Mark: On internal molecular statistics, especially in the case of chain molecules I , monthly books for chemistry, volume 65, 1934, pp. 93-124
  4. ↑ 18. The inspiration of Herman Mark , Teller in a video on "Web of Stories"
personal data
SURNAME Mark, Hermann F.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mark, Hermann Franz; Mark, Herman Francis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian chemist (polymer chemistry)
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH April 6, 1992
Place of death Austin, Texas , USA