[3] His early investigations also led to the development of a dramatically improved process for manufacturing tetraethyl lead, an important gasoline additive.

His father, Brede Pedersen, was a Norwegian marine engineer who immigrated to Korea in order to join the Korean customs service after leaving home due to family issues.

[8] His Japanese mother, Takino Yasui, immigrated from Japan to Korea with her family and established a successful line of work by trading soybeans and silkworms located close to the Unsan County mines, where the couple ultimately met.

[9] According to Pedersen in a separate autobiographical account of his childhood, he had been born prior to the Russo-Japanese War and because his mother had still been grieving over the then-recent death of his older brother, he did not feel welcomed as a child.

While spending his undergraduate life in 1922 studying chemical engineering at the University of Dayton in Ohio, Pedersen had been a well balanced student who immersed himself in the sports, academic and social aspects of his college.

Although his professors at the time encouraged him to stay and pursue a PhD in organic chemistry, Pedersen decided to start his career instead, partially because he no longer wanted to be supported by his father.

[9] After leaving the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pedersen became employed at the DuPont Company in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1927 through connections from his research advisor, Professor James F.

[14] Pedersen had a particular interest in industry as he started his focus on his chemical career, which influenced the direction of problems he set out to solve as a chemist.

[16] In the whole process of the Nobel Prize winning, the Dupont Company fully supported Pedersen by providing him a full-time public relations man, and a part-time secretary.

[19] Through studying the bio[2-(o-Hydroxyphenoxy)Ethyl] ether, Pedersen accidentally discovered an unknown substances described as a "goo" while purifying the compound.

Possibly, the crown ethers will serve, in a small way, to mark my footprint on earth" and Izatt believing this too shares Pedersen's message.

[23] Following Pedersen's breakthrough in realizing his accidental product and structure of dibenzo-18-crown-6, huge advancements have been made in the fields of macrocyclic and supramolecular chemistry.

Pedersen devoted the rest of his research career to studying these molecules and started one of the largest growths recently seen in a specific field of chemistry.