Herman Francis Mark

[citation needed] Mark worked on X-ray diffraction caused by passage through gases along with physicist Raimund Wierl.

Albert Einstein asked Mark and his colleagues to use the intense and powerful X-ray tubes available at their laboratory to verify the Compton Effect; this work provided the strongest confirmation yet of Einstein's light quantum theory for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

[2] In 1926, chemist Kurt Meyer of IG Farben offered Mark the assistant directorship of research at one of the company's laboratories.

With the rise of Nazi power, Mark's plant manager recognised that as a foreigner and the son of a Jewish father he would be most vulnerable.

Mark took his manager's advice and accepted a position as professor of physical chemistry at the University of Vienna, which brought him back to the city where he grew up.

Mark's stay in Vienna lasted six very successful years during which he designed a new curriculum in polymer chemistry and continued research in the field of macromolecules.

At the meeting, Thorne offered Mark a position as research manager with the company in Hawkesbury, Ontario, Canada, with the goal of modernizing its production of wood pulp for the purpose of making rayon, cellulose acetate, and cellophane.

Mark replied that he was busy but that he would try to visit Canada the following year to help reorganize the company's research facilities.

At the end of April, Mark and his family mounted a Nazi flag on the radiator of their car, strapped ski equipment on the roof, and drove across the border, reaching Zurich the next day.

[4][5][6] Some of Mark's earliest work at the Brooklyn Polytechnic involved experiments with reinforcing ice by mixing water with wood pulp or cotton wool before freezing.