Charles John Pedersen was born in Pusan, Korea in 1904. His father was a Norwegian sailor who later became a mechanical engineer and his Japanese mother came from a family of silkworm traders. Pedersen started school in Nagasaki, Japan, before emigrating to the United States in 1922. He was awarded a Master of Science degree by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1927. Pedersen worked for Du Pont in Wilmington, Delaware, as a researcher from 1927 to 1946. The company appointed him research associate in its Elastomers Chemicals Department in 1947. Pedersen remained in that position until his retirement in 1969, enjoying considerable freedom to choose his own areas of research.

In the early 1960s Pedersen was trying to find a catalyst for polymerization processes. Polymerization is the combination of molecules into a more complex structure. Although he was unsuccessful in finding the catalyst, the end result of one of his failed experiments caught his...