ABSTRACT
The Nobel laureate Herman Staudinger first believed that polymers were composed of very large molecules containing long sequences of simple chemical units linked together by covalent bonds and introduced the word macromolecules to describe them. By the early 1930s, most scientists in the field were convinced of the macromolecular structure of polymers. In the next two decades, the Nobel laureate Paul Flory established the fundamental principles of polymer science, with his prominent theoretical and experimental work. Flory’s magnum opus Principles of Polymer Chemistry, which was published in 1953, quickly became a standard text for all workers in the field of polymers and is widely used to this day.
