Chemistry Labs

Photo credit: University of Dayton yearbook, 1926 — Wikimedia Commons · Public domain

Charles J. Pedersen

1904–1989 · United States · 20th century

Nobel Chemistry 1987

American chemist of Norwegian-Japanese descent who spent his career at DuPont and discovered crown ethers, the first synthetic host molecules for metal ions.

Nobel Prize work

While studying vanadium catalysts at DuPont, he accidentally obtained a cyclic polyether — dibenzo-18-crown-6 — that selectively bound alkali metal cations in its cavity. His systematic synthesis of dozens of crown ethers launched host–guest chemistry and, with the work of Lehn and Cram, the field of supramolecular chemistry.

Fields

Organic chemistryEmerging interdisciplinary directions

Related topics

Intermolecular forces (van der Waals, hydrogen bonds)

London dispersion, dipole–dipole attraction and hydrogen bonding influence boiling, melting and solubility. These attractions act between particles, not as covalent bonds within a molecule.

Self-assembly, host–guest chemistry

Understand how noncovalent recognition organizes molecular components into assemblies, and how host cavities bind guests selectively through complementary shape, interactions, and solvent effects.

Chemists in the same field

Adolf Butenandt (1903)Kurt Alder (1902)Vladimir Prelog (1906)Vincent du Vigneaud (1901)Alexander Todd (1907)Richard Kuhn (1900)