By: Michelle Jones, Follow South Jersey Corresponding Writer
Editor’s Note: As part of the commemoration of Salem City’s 350th Anniversary, Follow South Jersey and the Follow Salem Podcast will offer 350 stories about the past, present, and future of Salem throughout 2025. We’d love to hear your story. Please contact Dean Johnson, Editor-in-Chief of Follow South Jersey, at dean@hopeloft.com.
SALEM, N.J. – Salem resident Charles Pederson was born in 1904 in Pusan, Korea which is modern day South Korea. By the age of 8 years old he was sent to school in Japan where he received an excellent education and was known for being quite intelligent.
It wasn’t long before he had his sights set on going to school in America where he studied chemistry at The University of Dayton and MIT. He was seen right away as being quite a talent and was offered a position in Dupont rising to the highest chemist position in the company.
He met his wife Susan Ault and settled down in Salem City, N.J., in 1947 where he lived out the remainder of his life for 42 years. His time here in Salem City was quite remarkable. He was able to focus his full attention on his job and eventually it would lead him to winning the Nobel Prize in 1987 for chemistry.
Through his work at Dupont he became interested in photochemistry which is a study of chemical reactions triggered by the absorption of light. Those experiments led him to discover a never-before-known molecular compound that he named crown ethers. Crown ethers are now an imperative compound used in the world of chemistry and are needed as agent catalysts, activating enzymes, gas chromatography, and as chiral selectors. He named the compound crown ethers because of their shape being that of a king’s crown.This discovery opened new possibilities for laboratory experiments that create chemical reactions, and laid the foundations for host guest chemistry.
What is notable is during his acceptance speech before the Nobel Prize committee, he named Salem as being a huge part of his life and expressed his excitement in celebrating the 350th anniversary of the first Swedes to land in the area.
During this 350th anniversary of the founding of Salem City, it is interesting to read his speech where he acknowledged the 350th anniversary of the Swedish colonists settling in New Jersey back in 1987.
If you would like to read his entire speech you can find it by clicking here.
Notes: Charles J. Pedersen – Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Fri. 1 Nov 2024. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1987/pedersen/biographical/
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