1. Introduction

The origin of polymer science as a part of organic chemistry goes back to the end of the nineteenth century when chemists detected that the properties of many substances with colloidal properties are connected with their molecular size. As a result of these and preferably of his own studies Hermann Staudinger (1881–1965) concluded in the early 1920s that substances like natural rubber, cellulose, and proteins but also many synthetic resins obtained by so-called polyreactions consist of large molecules, for which Staudinger proposed the term “macromolecules”. Nowadays, macromolecules and polymers are synonyms for substances with especially high molecular masses. However a sharp boundary cannot be drawn between low-molecular-weight and macromolecular substances; rather there is a gradual transition between them. One can say that macromolecules consist of a minimum of several hundred atoms. Accordingly, the lower limit for their molecular mass can be taken as around 10³ g mol⁻¹.