Polymer science or macromolecular science is a subfield of materials science concerned with polymers, primarily synthetic polymers such as plastics and elastomers. The field of polymer science includes researchers in multiple disciplines including chemistry, physics, and engineering. Subdisciplines This science comprises three main sub-disciplines: Polymer chemistry or macromolecular chemistry is concerned with the chemical synthesis and chemical properties of polymers. Polymer physics is concerned with the physical properties of polymer materials and engineering applications. Specifically, it seeks to present the mechanical, thermal, electronic and optical properties of polymers with respect to the underlying physics governing a polymer microstructure. Despite originating as an application of statistical physics to chain structures, polymer physics has now evolved into a discipline in its own right. Polymer characterization is concerned with the analysis of chemical structure, morphology, and the determination of physical properties in relation to compositional and structural parameters. History of polymer science The first modern example of polymer science is Henri Braconnot's work in the 1830s. Henri, along with Christian Schönbein and others, developed derivatives of the natural polymer cellulose, producing new, semi-synthetic materials, such as celluloid and cellulose acetate. The term "polymer" was coined in 1833 by Jöns Jakob Berzelius, though Berzelius did little that would be considered polymer science in the modern sense. In the 1840s, Friedrich Ludersdorf and Nathaniel Hayward independently discovered that adding sulfur to raw natural rubber (polyisoprene) helped prevent the material from becoming sticky. In 1844 Charles Goodyear received a U.S. patent for vulcanizing natural rubber with sulfur and heat. Thomas Hancock had received a patent for the same process in the UK the year before. This process strengthened natural rubber and prevented it from melting with heat without losing flexibility. This made practical products such as waterproofed articles possible. It also facilitated practical manufacture of such rubberized materials. Vulcanized rubber represents the first commercially successful product of polymer research. In 1884 Hilaire de Chardonnet started the first artificial fiber plant based on regenerated cellulose, or viscose rayon, as a substitute for silk, but it was very flammable. In 1907 Leo Baekeland invented the first synthetic plastic, a thermosetting phenol–formaldehyde resin called Bakelite. Despite significant advances in polymer synthesis, the molecular nature of polymers was not understood until the work of Hermann Staudinger in 1922. Prior to Staudinger's work, polymers were understood in terms of the association theory or aggregate theory, which originated with Thomas Graham in