23 lines
No EOL
2.1 KiB
Markdown
23 lines
No EOL
2.1 KiB
Markdown
---
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category: "World War II & Nazi Era"
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tags:
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- Person
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- WW2
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- Nazi
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summary: "Mark was driven out of Europe in 1938 by the Nazis and eventually became dean of faculty at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, turning it into a haven for Jewish refugees, including Chaim Weizmann."
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born: 1895-05-03
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died: 1992-04-06
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location: "Vienna, Austria"
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---
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Herman F. Mark was an Austrian chemist who became an eminent figure in polymer science. He was a colleague of [[Ernst David Bergmann]] at the Emil Fischer Institute of the University of Berlin in the early 1920s, where they worked together and published joint papers on the chemical structure of rubber, paint, and adhesives.[^1]
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Mark was driven out of Europe in 1938 by the Nazis and eventually became dean of faculty at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, turning it into a haven for Jewish refugees, including [[Chaim Weizmann]]. He remained a close friend and colleague of [[Ernst David Bergmann]], sharing Bergmann's view on the inevitability of Israeli nuclear weapons research. Mark believed that whether it was for desalination, power, or a bomb, nuclear energy still involved fission, and that [[Israel]] needed to be fully cognizant of nuclear physics.[^1]
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Mark became a constant commuter between Brooklyn and [[Israel]] after World War II, serving on planning boards and as a scientific adviser to the fledgling [[Weizmann Institute of Science]]. He insisted that without Bergmann, there would have been no Israeli bomb, stating that Bergmann was in charge of every kind of nuclear activity in [[Israel]] and completely understood nuclear fission.[^1]
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His son, [[Hans M. Mark]], served as secretary of the Air Force in the [[Jimmy Carter|Carter]] administration and was head of the executive committee of the [[National Reconnaissance Office]] (NRO), responsible for the development, procurement, and targeting of America's intelligence satellites. Hans Mark also worked at the [[Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory]], a main U.S. nuclear weapons facility.[^1]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 2. |