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Hermann Staudinger
1881–1965 · Germany · Born in the 1800s
Nobel Chemistry 1953
Established that polymers are long chains of covalently bonded molecules, founding macromolecular chemistry.
Nobel Prize work
The 1953 Nobel Prize in Chemistry honored his discoveries in macromolecular chemistry. Rejecting the prevailing view that polymers were loose aggregates of small molecules, Staudinger showed that rubber, cellulose and plastics consist of long chains of monomers linked by covalent bonds, and related solution viscosity to chain length — the basis of the Staudinger equation — founding modern polymer science.