Polymer physics—The ugly duckling story: Will polymer physics ever become a part of “proper” physics?

essential parts of life on Earth from its very beginning. People started using biopolymers many centuries ago. For example, ancient Egyptians prepared ink by mixing carbon black with Arabic gum, whereas Amazon Indians made boots from unvul-canized natural rubber extracted from hevea trees more that 25 centuries ago.1 People started synthesizing polymers dur-ing the first half of the 19th century, but they understood that these molecules are long linear chains only in the beginning of the 20th century.2,3 Unfortunately, even now in the begin-ning of the 21st century, some physicists do not know that polymers exist, as polymer physics is still not a part of ‘‘proper’ ’ Physics education and culture. This situation with polymer physics hasn’t improved much either over the last 3 decades since the publication of de Gennes ’ textbook ‘‘Scaling Concepts in Polymer Physics’’4 or over the last 2 decades since