Mark, Herman Francis

Mark, Herman Francis

(1895–1992) chemist; born in Vienna, Austria. He emigrated to the United States in 1938. He was a pioneer in polymer chemistry. He became director of I. G. Farben in Germany (1928) and director of the Chemical Institute at the University of Vienna (1933). In 1944, he became director of the Polymer Institute of the Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, which under him became a center for polymer research.

Mark, Herman Francis

 

Born May 3, 1895, in Vienna. American chemist, specialist in macromolecular compounds.

Mark graduated from the University of Vienna and obtained the degree of doctor of philosophy there in 1921. He was a scientific consultant with I. G. Farben Industrie from 1927 to 1932 and a professor of chemistry at the University of Vienna from 1932 to 1938. Between 1938 and 1940 he served as scientific director of the Canadian International Paper Company in Hawkesbury, Canada. He was a professor of organic chemistry at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute from 1940 to 1944 and dean of the faculty from 1944 to 1964. Since 1964, Mark has been director of the Institute of Polymer Research at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.

Mark’s main works deal with the application of physical methods to the study of polymer structure, the investigation of the form and size of macromolecules in solution, the modeling of biopolymers, and the synthesis of stereoregular and thermo-stable polymers and polymers with semiconductor properties. Mark is the editor of a 15-volume encyclopedia of polymers (Encyclopedia of Polymer Science and Technology, vols. 1-15, Index, 1964-72). He is a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1966).

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Stroenie vysokopolimernykh organicheskikh estestvennykh soedinenii, 2nd ed. Leningrad, 1934. (With K. Meyer.)
Khimiia i fizika tselliulozy. Leningrad, 1935.
Sovremennye melody issledovaniia vysokopolimernykh soedinenii. Leningrad, 1936.
Sopolimerizatsiia. Moscow, 1953. (With T. Alfrey and J. Bohrer.)
Lineinye i stereoreguliarnye polimery. Moscow, 1962. (With N. Gaylord.)