Charles Pedersen
Charles John Pedersen (born October 3, 1904 in Busan , then Korea , now South Korea , † October 26, 1989 in Salem , New Jersey ) was an American chemist at DuPont .
In 1987, together with Donald J. Cram and Jean-Marie Lehn, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity” .
Life
His father was a Norwegian marine engineer who worked in an American gold mine in Korea, and his mother, Takino Yasui, was from Japan . When he was eight, his parents sent him to a boarding school in Nagasaki , and two years later he switched to a Catholic boarding school in Yokohama .
He studied chemistry at the University of Dayton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where he received his master's degree. His professors wanted him to do a PhD, but he no longer wanted to burden his father financially and decided to work at DuPont. He stayed there for 42 years.
In retirement he devoted himself to fishing, bird watching, his garden and wrote poetry.
He died in 1989 after a long and serious illness.
Research work
In the first years of his career at DuPont from 1927, he developed, among other things, an improved manufacturing method for the tetraethyl lead, which was then used as a knock inhibitor . The 65 patents granted to him include several on fuel additives .
In 1959 he moved to another DuPont research laboratory. There he investigated the catalytic effect of heavy metal compounds with organic ligands . He systematically researched the complex compounds of vanadium . In 1960 he came across conspicuous crystals in the muddy residue of an experiment. He examined them more closely, where he discovered the previously unknown class of compounds of crown ethers . More precisely, it was the compound 2,3,11,12-dibenzo-1,4,7,10,13,16-hexaoxacyclooctadeca-2,11-diene, which gave it the more easily remembered name dibenzo-18-crown -6 gave. For several years he studied the new class of compounds in detail.
In 1967 he submitted the sum total of his discoveries for publication. Contrary to academic practice, he had published all the results of his work from several years as a 20-page article, whereas others would have submitted a dozen publications based on the same material. The article immediately gained wide recognition.
Pedersen, who was reluctant to publish, wrote only a few smaller follow-up articles and retired two years later. Research into crown ethers was continued and expanded by various working groups around the world.
The news of the award of the Nobel Prize in October 1987 came completely unexpected for Pedersen.
Fonts
- Macrocyclic Polyethers for Complexing Metals J. Am. Chem. Soc. 89, 7017 (1967)
literature
- Charles J. Pedersen , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 50/1989 of December 4, 1989, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
- Michael Freemantle: Crowning achievement. Pedersen's 1967 "blockbuster" paper reported discovery of crown ethers and their complexes . In: Chemical & Engineering News , July 21, 2003, Vol. 81, No. 29, p. 33, doi: 10.1021 / cen-v081n029.p033 .
Web links
- Autobiography at nobel.se
- Information from the Nobel Foundation on the awarding of the 1987 award to Charles Pedersen
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Pedersen, Charles |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Pedersen, Charles John (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American chemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 3, 1904 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Busan , what was then Korea , now South Korea |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 26, 1989 |
| Place of death | Salem, New Jersey , New Jersey |