Charles J. Pedersen: Innovator in macrocyclic chemistry and co-recipient of the 1987 Nobel Prize in chemistry

Abstract

Charles J. Pedersen began life in Korea where his father was employed as an engineer at a gold mine in a remote region of that country. He received his primary and secondary school education in Japan and university training in the United States. He was employed as an organic research chemist at DuPont for 42 years. The signal accomplishment of this unusual individual was his serendipitous discovery of macrocyclic polyethers and of their selective complexation of alkali metal cations. This discovery sparked the development of a new field of chemistry and led to his sharing the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1987. An attempt is made to understand Pedersen as a person in this article.