October 26th marks the passing of Charles Pedersen. Pedersen was an American biochemist who researched crown ether molecules. He discovered an impurity in a material he was investigating that helped dissolve sodium hydroxide. Further analysis of the impurity found it consisted of a ring of 10 carbon atoms and 5 oxygen atoms where there were two carbons between each oxygen. He found the sodium ions from the solution would loosely attach themselves to the oxygen atoms in the ring where it appeared to wear the ring molecule like a crown. He discovered if the size of the ring would change, different metallic ions could be trapped like the sodium ion. His crown ether molecules became useful for gathering specific metallic ions from aqueous solutions. Pedersen would earn a third of the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this discovery. Find out what else occurred on this day in science history.
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