Michael Szwarc

Michael M. Szwarc ( born June 9, 1909 in Bedzin, Poland, † 4 August 2000 ) was an American polymer chemist.

Szwarc was born into a Jewish family in 1932 and received a degree in chemical engineering at the Technical University in Warsaw. In 1935 he emigrated to Palestine and was awarded his doctorate in 1942 in organic chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Then he went to the research group of Michael Polanyi at Manchester University, where he received his doctorate in 1947 for a second time (Ph. D. ) - in physical chemistry. In 1949 he was awarded a D.Sc. Manchester University and was a Senior Lecturer there. In 1952 he went to the U.S. as a professor of physical chemistry and polymer chemistry at the State University of New York ( SUNY ). In 1967 he founded the Center for Polymer Research, which he directed until his retirement in 1979. He continued his research after the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, University of Southern California.

In 1956 he coined the term Living polymerization ( Living polymerization) in a Nature article and made it to his research program.

In 1966 he became a member of the Royal Society and in 1988 the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1970 he received the Kyoto Prize, the ACS Award in Polymer Chemistry, 1991. He was four honorary doctorates (lions, Uppsala, Pasteur Institute, Jagiellonian University ).

Publications

• Ionic polymerization fundamentals, Munich, Hanser 1996, ISBN 3-446-18506-2
• Marcel van Beylen: Ionic polymerization and living polymers, Chapman and Hall, 1993, ISBN 978-94-011-1478-3
• Carbanion, living polymers and electron transfer processes, Interscience 1968