Staudinger, Hermann, 1881–1965, German chemist, Ph.D. Univ. of Halle, 1903. Staudinger held faculty positions at the Univ. of Strasbourg (1903–7), the Technical Univ. of Karlsruhe (1907–12), and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich (1912–26). He then joined the Albert Ludwig Univ. of Freiburg, where he was a lecturer from 1926 until he retired in 1951. Staudinger received the 1953 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discoveries in the field of macromolecular chemistry. He demonstrated that polymers could be very large, formed of as many as 100,000 atoms, a notion that ran counter to the thinking of his day but paved the way for the tremendous growth of the plastics industry beginning in the mid-20th cent.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Chemistry: Biographies
