Bill Soderlund and Soderlund Village Drug of St. Peter recently made a major gift of $205,000 to the Department of Chemistry at Gustavus Adolphus College. The gift will enable the college to purchase a Liquid Chromatography/Tandem Mass Spectrometer, to be used in instructional laboratories and faculty/student research projects.
The instrument helps to identify and quantify trace levels of organic compounds. It is particularly well-suited for investigating pesticides and the byproducts of their breakdown (both chemical via microorganisms in soils and waters, and with light in rivers and lakes). It is also the method of choice in nearly all studies of pharmaceutical metabolism and the analysis of impurities in medications. In the environmental field, this instrument helps analyze organic compounds at concentrations below the 1 part-per-trillion level and detection of some materials at levels of about 100 parts-per-quadrillion.
In addition to this gift, Bill Soderlund and Soderlund Village Drug served as one of the sponsors of the 2007 Nobel Conference.
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