Sulfur vulcanization a reaction with low levels of unsaturated organic linkers (e.g. 1,3‐diisopropenylbenzene). This process is called inverse vulcanisation and produces polymers where sulfur is the main component. It is not currently of commercial importance but had been investigated as a means of producing polymers for lithium–sulfur batterys and for creating water filters with a high affinity for mercury. The curing of rubber has been carried out since prehistoric times. The name of the first major civilization in Guatemala and Mexico, the Olmec, means 'rubber people' in the Aztec language. Ancient Mesoamericans, spanning from ancient Olmecs to Aztecs, extracted latex from "Castilla
Polymer was proposed in 1920 by Hermann Staudinger, who spent the next decade finding experimental evidence for this hypothesis. Polymers are studied in the fields of biophysics and macromolecular science, and polymer science (which includes polymer chemistry and polymer physics). Historically, products arising from the linkage of repeating units by covalent chemical bonds have been the primary focus of polymer science; emerging important areas of the science now focus on non-covalent links. Polyisoprene of latex rubber is an example of a natural/biological polymer, and the polystyrene of styrofoam is an example of a synthetic polymer. In biological contexts, essentially all biological