H. F. Mark

Abstract

When I arrived from Canada in Brooklyn in September 1940, I was attached to the Shellac Bureau whose Director, Professor William Hewlett Gardner, had established a National Testing Laboratory for this important natural resin and, at the same time, was carrying out very interesting studies on its chemical composition and structure. We soon agreed that, in view of the World Situation considerable interest and effort should be devoted to synthetic coatings and film formers and that a few graduate students should start work in this direction. When we submitted to Raymond E. Kirk, Head of the Chemistry Department, a proposal for space, equipment and personnel, he immediately agreed and has always, up to his premature death in 1957» been a benevolent and deeply understanding champion of all polymer work at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. The expereiences collected at the I. G. Farben Laboratory in Ludwigshafen (1926–1932) at the University of Vienna (1932–1938) and at the Canadian International Paper Company in Hawkesbury, Ontario (1938–1940) made it clear that systematic progress could only be espected if organic chemists, physical chemists and at least one physicist could be assembled into a team to conduct research from the monomer or monomers through the polymerization process and the characterization of the resulting materials to the structure and properties of such final products as coatings, films and fibers.