Sole laureate from DuPont

Early Years and Career at DuPont

Pedersen was born in 1904 in Korea, the son of a Norwegian father and a Japanese mother. His father was a maritime engineer who later was hired as a mechanical engineer by Oriental Consolidated Mining Company, an American concern that ran the Unsan gold mines in the northern part of Korea. According to Pedersen, childhood at Unsan was exciting, reminiscent of the American West.

At the age of eight he was sent abroad to Japan for schooling, first at a convent school in Nagasaki, and two years later to a French-American preparatory school in Yokohama run by the Marianist order of Catholic priests and brothers. As he approached college age, the Marianists steered Pedersen to the order's University of Dayton in Ohio.

After receiving a degree in chemical engineering from Dayton, Pedersen went to MIT for a master's degree in organic chemistry. He was urged by his advisor, James F. Norris, to pursue a doctorate. Pedersen declined. He had been sending bills home to his father for too long and wanted to go to work. Also, he admits candidly that "I was no great lover of formal education; I didn't look forward to several more years of schoolwork."

Professor Norris contacted colleagues at DuPont to tell them they should consider hiring one of his especially bright students. They did, and Pedersen reported to the Chambers Works' Jackson Laboratory in Deepwater, N.J., in 1927. He didn't leave until 32 years later when he transferred to the Experimental Station for the last 10 years of his 42-year DuPont career.

Pedersen's mentor at Jackson Lab, William S. Calcott, recognized something special in his new employee from the start, and Pedersen wasted no time in confirming this judgement. One of his earliest accomplishments - and the one that had the most commercial impact - was the discovery of a dramatic improvement in the process for making tetraethyl lead, for many years an important gasoline additive. Then during the 1930s, Pedersen discovered the first deactivators to counter the degradative effects of heavy metals in gasoline, oils and rubbers. This insight also had considerable commercial value. Next, Pedersen researched degradative oxidation of petroleum products. In the space of 10 years he became the inventor or coinventor of 30 patents for antioxidants and other products.

In 1946, Pedersen was promoted to research associate, then the company's highest research position, which enabled him to pick his own projects.

In 1957, the Organic Chemicals Department was divided into two departments, one of which was Elastomers. Pedersen had the option of remaining in Orchem or going with Elastomers. He chose Elastomers in a decision that reveals much about his character.

"I hated to drive," he said, "and I know that if I chose to stay with Orchem, I could continue to work at Jackson Lab which was only 15 minutes from my house in Salem (N.J.). If I went to Elastomers, I would have to drive all the way to the Experimental Station near Wilmington, Del., each day. But I said to myself that it was not moral to make my decision on that basis alone. So I went with Elastomers because I knew the people who would be managing the research, and I knew that they really wanted me to go with them."

At the Experimental Station, Pedersen reported to Herman Schroeder, and conducted several original investigations in a field not familiar too him, namely hydrocarbon polymers. In 1961, Schroeder suggested that he return to his field of expertise --- the catalytic action of trace heavy metals and their control by use of organic ligands. He decided on a systematic study of complexes of vanadyl ion (VO) with multidentate phenolic ethers both as polymerization catalysts and for deactivating residual pro-oxidant vanadium in the polymers. In one of his reactions, he was left with a "brownish goo." In his initial attempt to recover his desired product, he discovered some unknown crystals as a byproduct. He studied the crystals and was intrigued by their properties.

Pedersen was startled to learn that any methanol-soluble salt with sodium would enable the crystal to dissolve in methanol. But why? Pedersen soon found out. The molecular weight of his crystal was exactly twice what he had predicted. "That was the 'eureka' moment," Pedersen said. "The molecular structure of the crystal was ring-shaped and the sodium ions had fallen into the hole in the center of the molecule and been held there."

Pedersen named his compound a "crown" ether because the official names "were so complex and hard for me to remember." He chose "crown" for aesthetic reasons as well. The molecules were not like a necklace that has to open to be put on or taken off. Rather, they were like a crown since they maintain their unbroken structure during reactions.

Pedersen embarked on an exhilarating period of research into this new uncharted territory of chemistry. He was openly appreciative of his DuPont managers for encouraging him to pursue these studies, even when it was apparent that they would yield little of immediate commercial value. "I think it is important for people to know that DuPont gave me nine years to do this work, which was an opportunity that I might not have gotten elsewhere," Pedersen said.

He was also quick to point out that he accomplished his most important work late in his career. "It tends to be said that the best work performed by scientists is done by the time they are 35 years old," he says. "This work was done during my last nine years at DuPont. It capped my career."

Pedersen was the first career DuPont scientist to win a Nobel Prize.