Michael Szwarc

Michael M. Szwarc (born June 9, 1909 in Bedzin , Poland ; † August 4, 2000 ) was an American polymer chemist .

Szwarc came from a Jewish family and graduated from the Technical University in Warsaw with a degree in chemical engineering in 1932. In 1935 he emigrated to Palestine and received his doctorate in organic chemistry from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1942 . Then he went to the research group of Michael Polanyi at the University of Manchester , where he received his second doctorate (Ph. D.) in 1947 - in physical chemistry. In 1949 he received a D.Sc. from Manchester University, where he became a Senior Lecturer. In 1952 he went to the USA as a professor of physical chemistry and polymer chemistry at the State University of New York (SUNY). In 1967 he founded the Center for Polymer Research there, which he headed until his retirement in 1979. He then conducted research at the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute at the University of Southern California .

In 1956, he coined the term Living Polymerization in a Nature article and made this his research program.

In 1966 he became a member of the Royal Society and in 1988 of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1970 he received the ACS Award in Polymer Chemistry , and in 1991 the Kyoto Prize . He received four honorary doctorates (Leuven, Uppsala, Pasteur Institute, Jagiellonian University).

Publications

• Ionic polymerization fundamentals. Hanser, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-446-18506-2 .
• with Marcel van Beylen: Ionic Polymerization and Living Polymers. Chapman and Hall 1993, ISBN 94-011-1478-1 .
• Carbanions, living polymers and electron transfer processes. Interscience, New York 1968, ISBN 0-470-84305-5 .

Web links

• Chemical Heritage Foundation ( Memento from July 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive )