Jean-Marie Lehn’s 85th Birthday

Jean-Marie Lehn’s 85th Birthday

Author: ChemistryViews (Photo © CC BY-SA 4.0; original Photo: Claude TRUONG-NGOC)

Chemistry Nobel Laureate and pioneer in supramolecular chemistry Jean-Marie Lehn, University of Strasbourg, France, celebrates his 85th birthday on September 30, 2024.

 

Jean-Marie Lehn, born on September 30, 1939, in Rosheim, France, studied chemistry at the University of Strasbourg and received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1963 under the supervision of Guy Ourisson. He then performed postdoctoral research with Robert Burns Woodward at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, where he took part in the total synthesis of Vitamin B12. In 1966, Jean-Marie Lehn was appointed as maître de conférences (Assistant Professor) at the Chemistry Department of the University of Strasbourg. In 1980, he became Chair of Chemistry of Molecular Interactions at the Collége de France in Paris.

Jean-Marie Lehn is a pioneer of supramolecular chemistry, which—instead of studying the bonds inside one molecule—looks at intermolecular interactions and molecular assemblies. Lehn received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1987 together with Donald J. Cram and Charles J. Pedersen for their work on the “development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity”. Lehn specifically was honored for his development of cryptands, three-dimensional multidentate ligands.

Besides the Nobel Prize and among many other honors, Jean-Marie Lehn has received the Gold Medal of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in 1981, the Karl Ziegler Prize from the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh, German Chemical Society) in 1989, the Davy Medal of the Royal Society and the Lavoisier Medal of the Société Française de Chimie (SCF, French Chemical Society) in 1997, and the Gold Medal “Giulio Natta” from the Società Chimica Italiana (SCI, Italian Chemical Society) in 2003, as well as many honorary doctorates and honorary memberships and fellowships in dozens of learned societies. He was Co-Founder of Chemistry – A European Journal and a Chemistry Europe Honorary Fellow.

(Photo © CC BY-SA 4.0; original BW photo: Claude TRUONG-NGOC)


Selected Publications


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The huge National Conference of the Italian Chemical Society (SCI) in Milan covered a wide range of topics from chemistry, but also from ethics to music, film, and visual arts – some highlights, including a summary of the talk of J. M. Lehn

 

 

 

 

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