Staudinger

German organic chemist and polymer chemist. Born the second son of F. Staudinger, a neo-Kantian philosopher, he received his doctorate from the University of Halle in 1903. While an assistant at the University of Strasbourg, he discovered ketene, which established his footing as an organic chemist, and in 1907 he became an associate professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. In 1912, he became a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, where he became interested in synthetic rubber. In 1926, he became a professor at the University of Freiburg. From 1920 onwards, in a series of papers, he argued that rubber, cellulose, plastics, proteins, etc. are made of large molecules (makromolecules) (polymers), and that the physical properties unique to polymers are derived from the size and shape of the molecules. He also expressed a formula for the relationship between the viscosity of a dilute polymer solution and the molecular weight. At the time, polymers were thought to be associations of small molecules, so the polymer theory was initially strongly opposed in academia, but by the late 1930s it had become widely accepted. As the founder of polymer chemistry, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1953.

Source: Morikita Publishing "Chemical Dictionary (2nd Edition)" Information about the Chemical Dictionary 2nd Edition

ドイツの有機化学者，高分子化学者．新カント派哲学者の父F. Staudingerの次男として生まれる．1903年ハレ大学で学位を取得．シュトラスブルク大学の助手時代にケテンを発見し，有機化学者としての地歩を固め，1907年カールスルーエ工科大学員外教授となる．1912年スイスのチューリヒ連邦工科大学の教授となり，合成ゴムに関心をもつようになる．1926年フライブルク大学教授となる．1920年以降，一連の論文で，ゴム，セルロース，プラスチック，タンパク質などが巨大分子(Makromolekül) (高分子)からなり，ポリマーに特有な物性が分子の大きさや形状に由来することを主張した．また，ポリマーの希薄溶液の粘度と分子量の関係を式で表した．当時，ポリマーは小分子の会合体と考えられていたため，高分子説は当初，学界で強い反対を受けたが，1930年代後半までに広く受容された．高分子化学の創始者として，1953年ノーベル化学賞を受賞した．

出典　森北出版「化学辞典（第2版）」化学辞典 第2版について　情報