Herman Mark: Life and accomplishments

This short outline of Herman Mark's career covers his youth in Vienna, his activity in the army during World War I, his years at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin‐Dahlem where he was mostly concerned with X‐ray crystallography, his career as the director of a research laboratory of high molecular compounds of the IG Farben in Ludwigshafen, his years at the University of Vienna where he designed the first academic curriculum of polymer chemistry and his final years at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now Polytechnic University) where he created the first American doctoral program in polymer science. His activity was crucial to the recognition of polymer chemistry as an important scientific discipline and to its international organization. He was equally at home in the academic environment, and as an industrial and government consultant. His crucial scientific contributions included the first crystal structure of a macromolecule, the first derivation of the mechanical property of a fiber from molecular parameters and the statistical theory of rubber elasticity.