Wine Book

Collection

Identifier: MSS 0097-Item 0144

Staff Only

Scope and Content Note

Nobel Prize-winning chemist Charles J. Pedersen’s “Wine Book” is a seventy-two page volume with fifty-eight pages filled. This log book records the results of wine tasting. There are columns describing 368 bottles of wine, individuals who sampled them, the food with which they were served, and the quality.

This single volume wine log by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Charles J. Pedersen is dated December 7, 1964 and includes 368 entries describing wines purchased and tasted, including price, food with which it was served, and its quality.

Noble Prize-winning scientist Charles J. Pedersen was living in Salem, New Jersey, in December 1963 when he began this log. The seventy-two page notebook includes 368 individual entries on 57 pages. Each entry provides space for information about each bottle of wine including the purchase date, color, name, year, and remarks. The facing page provides space for recording the circumstances when a bottle was opened, including date, guests sampling, food with which it was served, and the quality. This volume was carefully and scientifically maintained from 1963 until 1981.

Included with the volume is a news clipping on wine, autograph notes, and commercially produced wine literature.

The manuscript is a black, cloth-bound notebook with autograph notes and 15 pages laid in. It is in good condition with a small “W” [wine] on spine and front cover. The entries were all written in ink. The volume includes his name, address and the date, December 7, 1963 on the inside front cover.

Dates

Creation: 1963-1981

Creator

Pedersen, Charles J., 1904-1989 (Person)

Language of Materials

Materials entirely in English.

Restrictions on Access

The collection is open for research.

Terms Governing Use and Reproduction

Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S. Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or reproduce is required from the copyright holder. Please contact Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, http://library.udel.edu/spec/askspec/

Biographical Note

Charles J. Pedersen (1904-1989) was a Nobel Prize-winning chemist who worked for the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company in Wilmington, Delaware. he was born in Korea to a Norwegian father and Japanese-Korean mother. Pedersen lived in Japan before moving to the United States for his studies. He began working at du Pont in 1927.

Pedersen was a co-winner of the 1987 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry for development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity. His career as a chemist at du Pont spanned forty-two years.

“Charles J. Pedersen Winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.” The Noble Prize Internet Archive. http://almaz.com/nobel/chemistry/1987c.html (accessed June 12, 2007). Pedersen, Charles J. Autobiography. Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1987, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1988. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1987/pedersen-autobio.html (accessed June 12, 2007).Pedersen, Charles J., 1904-1989. LC Control Number: n 92025948. http://authorities.loc.gov (accessed June 12, 2007)Additional biographical information derived from the collection.