Hermann Staudinger was awarded the 1953 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work demonstrating that polymers are high molecular weight covalently bonded molecules. Prior to his work, the consensus among chemists was that polymers were loosely aggregated of smaller molecules, similar to what today we call a colloid.
Unfortunately for me, Staudinger published in German, and my German reading skills are not quite good enough to understand his papers. What I would like to know is: what evidence did Staudinger use to convince his contemporaries that polymers are high molecular weight molecules?
