BROOKLYN,POLYTECHNIC

Many of us date Professor Mark s contributions to polymer education and science as beginning in 19 10 with his arrival at Brooklyn Polytechnic. This is only because we have not recognized the pages of scientific discovery prior to the coming of the Ge-heimrat to the USA. 

Shortly after his arrival at Brooklyn Polytechnic, he and a physicist on the staff, Isidor Frankuchen, quietly hatched, unbeknownst to the higher echelons, a scheme to bring in money to the Polytechnic to assist faculty to travel, etc. They prepared an invitation to many of the chemical industrial personnel to attend, on the Brooklyn Polytechnic campus, an intensive two-week summer... 

In 1953, he received an offer from the University of Pennsylvania, one of the oldest and most distinguished universities in the United States, which was also located in a major center of chemical industries. In 1954, he accepted the position as the Benjamin Franklin Professor of Chemistry and chairman of the Chemistry Department. In the transitional summer of 1954, he gave a series of lectures on polymer chemistry at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, which became the basis of his first book, Reactions at the Carbon-Carbon Double Bond. An important original idea posited in this book was the phenomenon of pi-bonding. From the beginning of his doctoral research at Harvard, a major common thread to many of Charles contributions was his keen interest in the detailed mechanisms by which chemical reactions occur. 

Gable, C. L., Seminar on New Polymeric Materials, Brooklyn Polytechnic... 

In response to the needs of industry, a number of centers for graduate study in maeromolecular science have developed. The first such center was at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute (now Polytechnic University) and large centers now exist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland Ohio I Pig. I). University of Massachusetts (Amherst) and University of Akron (Ohio). The first accredited engineering undergraduate degree program in polymer science was developed in die Department of Maeromolecular Science at Case Western Reserve University. 

H. R. Kim, W. J. Marinelli, and N. Sivakumar, Laser Studies of Molecular Photodissociation Dynamics, to appear in Proceedings Fourth Symposium Recent Advances in Laser Spectroscopy, May 20, 1983, Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute of New York, Wiley, New York. 

Despite his own achievements, Furukawa s chapter indicates the need for future research. How did chemists and physicists work together in the 1940s and 1950s to create a new unified discipline of polymer science It would also be useful to look at how the discipline was taught in the period between 1940 and 1965, especially in the United States. To do this, one would need to examine which courses were taught, the launch of new journals and the evolution of textbooks across various editions. As the polymer science in America started in a few key institutions, notably Brooklyn Polytechnic, it would also be valuable to look at the diffusion of the new discipline from these seed institutions, tracing the careers of the early alumni and coworkers such as Charles Overberger. 

Castner, Hamilton Young — (Sep. 11, 1858, Brooklyn, New York, USA - Oct. 11,1899, Saranac Lake, New York, USA) Castner studied at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and at the School of Mines of Columbia University. He started as an analytical chemist, however, later he devoted himself to the design and the improvement of industrial chemical processes. He worked on the production of charcoal, and it led him to investigate the Devilles aluminum process. He discovered an efficient way to produce sodium in 1886 which made also the production of aluminum much cheaper. He could make aluminum on a substantial industrial scale at the Oldbury plant of The Aluminium Company Limited founded in England. However, - Hall and - Heroult invented their electrochemical process which could manufacture aluminum at an even lower price, and the chemical process became obsolete. Castner also started to use electricity, which became available and cheap after the invention of the dynamo by - Siemens in 1866, and elaborated the - chlor-alkali electrolysis process by using a mercury cathode. Since Karl Kellner (1851-1905) also patented an almost identical procedure, the process became known as Castner-Kellner process. Cast-... 

The work that the Nobel Committee cited appeared from 1956 to 1965. I spent almost the entire period at Brooklyn Polytechnic, which I left in 1964. 

He built a wonderful center for polymer science at Brooklyn Polytechnic and made the place stimulating in many ways. There were other outstanding people at Brooklyn Polytechnic, like Ewald in crystallography — he was Head of the Physics Department Fankuchen, who had worked with Bernal, and Ben Post and David Harker were other crystallographers there. 

From Brooklyn Polytechnic, I went to the University of Illinois at Urbana, and once, at a National Academy of Sciences meeting, (I was elected in 1970, and this was in 1977), I saw Harry Gray and we were talking. I had met Ahmed Zewail, who was also on the faculty here, and I had enjoyed our interaction. So they and probably some other people thought that it might be a good idea to have another theoretician around. I moved in 1978. 

Byron Riegel, chairman, Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, 111. Subcommittee on the Nomenclature of Macromolecules (not under Lucas NRC committee) Herman F. Mark, chairman, Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, Brooklyn 2, N. Y. 

The process is under study by Othmer and associates at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute (29). Few experimental results are available at this time. Process variables have been studied with the aid of a digital computer and two laboratory units have been assembled a small five-stage unit to demonstrate the... 

Gordy W 1960 Proc. Symp. MM Waves (Brooklyn Polytechnic Press)... 

Mole% Enthalpy above 0°C Btu/lbmole solution Vapor-Liquid Equilibrium Data J. G. Dunlop, M.S. thesis. Brooklyn Polytechn. Inst., 1948) ... 

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