Herman Mark | Biography

Herman Francis Mark was born on May 3, 1895, in Vienna, Austria, the son of Herman Carl Mark, a Jewish surgeon who had converted to Lutheranism, and Lili Mueller Mark. In July 1913, he graduated from Gymnasium (high school). In the fall of that year, Mark enlisted in the Austrian army as an einjahrig-Freiwilliger (one-year volunteer) in order to discharge his military obligation so that he could start his university studies in the fall of 1914. World War I broke out, and Mark spent five years in a mountain infantry regiment on the Italian front. He was wounded three times, earned 15 medals, and became Austria's most decorated company-grade officer. In November 1918, Mark's division was captured by the Italians. He spent 11 months in a prison camp at a former convent, where he studied Italian, French, and English and organized a general chemistry course. In 1919, Mark returned to Vienna and continued his study of chemistry at the university, which he had begun in 1915 during his recuperation from a war wound. In July 1921 Mark received his doctorate summa cum laude.

In 1922 Mark married Marie Schramek. Although she was Roman Catholic, the couple became ardent Zionists and and visited Israel several times. Also, in that same year Mark joined the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin-Dahlem. Here, he used such newly developed experimental methods as x-ray diffraction to study the structures of natural textile fibers (e.g., cellulose, silk, and wool), which he showed to consist of long-chain molecules with molecular weights greater than 100,000. During the period 1927-32 at IG Farbenindustrie, Germany's largest chemical cormpany located in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, where Mark had become an Assistant Director, he worked on electron diffraction and the synthesis and practical application of his results. However, he continued his fundamental studies of macromolecules and published two books. With Carl Wulff , Mark developed a process for the catalytic production of styrene from ethyl benzene, which lowered the cost of styrene and made possible the manufacture from it of polystyrene and Buna S synthetic rubber.

Sensing the increasing Nazi threat, Mark left Germany to become Professor of Chemistry at his alma mater, the University of Vienna, where he served from 1932-38. Here, he taught physical chemistry and developed the world's first curriculum in polymer science and technology. At that time, only a few laboratories, mostly industrial ones, cultivated the subject, and no organized university courses were available. He continued his research, wrote two more books, and traveled extensively abroad and lectured repeatedly at international conferences to publicize his laboratory as well as the new discipline of polymer science.

After helping Jewish colleagues leave Austria, Mark was arrested on March 12, 1938, the day after the German annexation (Anschluss), and imprisoned and interrogated by the Gestapo in Vienna. In April, disguised as Alpine tourists, Mark, his wife, two young sons, and his Jewish niece fled to neutral Switzerland, taking their valuables in the form of platinum coat hangers. They eventually migrated to Hawkesbury, Ontario, where Mark became Research Manager for the Canadian International Pulp and Paper Company. He worked there from 1938 to 1940, and founded the Polymer Bulletin as well as the monograph series High Polymers and Related Substances.

After successfully completing his assignment of modernizing equipment, training personnel, and applying recent fundamental results to practical production problems at Hawkesbury, in 1940 Mark became Adjunct Professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, New York, which provided a teacher's visa and a consultantship with the DuPont Company. In 1942 he became Professor. During World War II, Mark directed a number of research projects for the United States government. In 1944, he founded the Institute of Polymer Research, the first of its kind in the United States. He continued as its Director until 1964. From 1961 to 1974 he served as Dean of the Faculty at Brooklyn Polytechnic and continued his activity as a lecturer and writer long after his retirement in 1964. Mark was the author of more than 600 publications and the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and awards, including the United States National Medal of Science, which recognized his lifetime achievement in polymer science. Mark continued his extensive travels, visiting throughout his career more than a thousand scientists and engineers in more than a hundred countries.

Mark died in Austin, Texas, on April 6, 1992, less than a month before his 97th birthday. Although not the world's first polymer chemist, he was known as the father of polymer science because of his many contributions to polymer science research and education, first in Europe and then in the United States. Nobel chemistry laureate Linus Pauling regarded Mark "a pioneer in modern structural chemistry and an important early contributor to its development."