A polymer is a high molecular-weight material, either synthetic or natural, that is composed of repeating units called monomers covalently bonded in a linear fashion. This definition rests largely upon the research of Hermann Staudinger, one of the founders of polymer science and the recipient of the 1953 Nobel Prize for chemistry. He led the fight to prove that molecules with molecular weights of over 5,000 existed. His intuitions were correct and he succeeded in proving his considerable opposition wrong.

Staudinger was born in 1881. He attended the Universities of Munich and Halle, Germany, and received his doctorate in chemistry in 1903. He taught at various institutions before settling at Freiburg, Germany, in 1926 where he stayed until his retirement in 1951. He died in 1965. Staudinger became intrigued by large molecules when he began to study the structures of rubber. He first expressed his opinion that covalent bonds were an integral part of macromolecules...