Jean-Marie Lehn


Jean-Marie Lehn is a French chemist. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Donald Cram and Charles Pedersen in 1987 for his synthesis of cryptands. Lehn was an early innovator in the field of supramolecular chemistry, i.e., the chemistry of host–guest molecular assemblies created by intermolecular interactions, and continues to innovate in this field. his group has published 790 peer-reviewed articles in chemistry literature.

reported by Lehn et al. in Helv. Chim. Acta., 2003, 86, 1598–1624.

Biography

Early years

Lehn was born in Rosheim, Alsace, France to Pierre and Marie Lehn. He is of Alsatian German descent. His father was a baker, but because of his interest in music, he later became the city organist. Lehn also studied music, saying that it became his major interest after science. He has continued to play the organ throughout his professional career as a scientist. His high school studies in Obernai, from 1950 to 1957, included Latin, Greek, German, and English languages, French literature, and he later became very keen of both philosophy and science, particularly chemistry. In July 1957, he obtained the baccalauréat in philosophy, and in September of the same year, the baccalauréat in Natural Sciences.
At the University of Strasbourg, although he considered studying philosophy, he ended up taking courses in physical, chemical and natural sciences, attending the lectures of Guy Ourisson, and realizing that he wanted to pursue a research career in organic chemistry. He joined Ourisson's lab, working his way to the Ph.D. There, he was in charge of the lab's first NMR spectrometer, and published his first scientific paper, which pointed out an additivity rule for substituent induced shifts of proton NMR signals in steroid derivatives. He obtained his Ph.D., and went to work for a year at Robert Burns Woodward's laboratory at Harvard University, working among other things on the synthesis of vitamin B12.

Career

In 1966, he was appointed a position as maître de conférences at the Chemistry Department of the University of Strasbourg. His research focused on the physical properties of molecules, synthesizing compounds specifically designed for exhibiting a given property, in order to better understand how that property was related to structure.
In 1968, he achieved the synthesis of cage-like molecules, comprising a cavity inside which another molecule could be lodged. Organic chemistry enabled him to engineer cages with the desired shape, thus only allowing a certain type of molecule to lodge itself in the cage. This was the premise for an entire new field in chemistry, sensors. Such mechanisms also play a great role in molecular biology.
These cryptands, as Lehn dubbed them, became his main center of interest, and led to his definition of a new type of chemistry, "supramolecular chemistry", which instead of studying the bonds inside one molecule, looks at intermolecular attractions, and what would be later called "fragile objects", such as micelles, polymers, or clays.
In 1980, he was elected to become a teacher at the prestigious Collège de France, and in 1987 was awarded the Nobel Prize, alongside Donald Cram and Charles Pedersen for his works on cryptands.
He is currently a member of the Reliance Innovation Council which was formed by Reliance Industries Limited, India.

Personal life

Lehn was married in 1965 to Sylvie Lederer, and together they had two sons, David and Mathias.
Lehn is an atheist.

Honors and awards

Lehn has won numerous awards and honors including:
Lehn received numerous Honorary Doctorates, from:
  1. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1984
  2. Autonomous University of Madrid, 1985
  3. Georg-August University of Göttingen, 1987
  4. Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1987
  5. University of Crete, 1989
  6. Università degli Studi di Bologna, 1989
  7. Charles University of Prague, 1990
  8. University of Sheffield, 1991
  9. University of Twente, 1991
  10. University of Athens, 1992
  11. National Technical University of Athens, 1992
  12. Illinois Wesleyan University, 1995
  13. Université de Montréal, 1995
  14. University of Bielefeld, 1998
  15. Honorary Professor, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 1998
  16. Honorary Professor, Southeast University, Nanjing, 1998
  17. Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 1998
  18. Faculté des Sciences Appliquées, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1999
  19. Nagoya University, 2000
  20. Université de Sherbrooke, 2000
  21. Università di Trieste, 2001
  22. Honorary Professor, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 2003
  23. Honorary Professor, Nanjing University, 2003
  24. Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, 2003
  25. University of St. Andrews, 2004
  26. Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, 2005
  27. Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, 2005
  28. Masaryk University, Brno, 2005
  29. Honorary Professor, Beijing University, 2005
  30. Kyushu University, 2005
  31. Moscow State University, 2006
  32. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2006
  33. Kazan Federal University, 2006
  34. Novosibirsk State University, 2006
  35. Honorary Professor, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 2007
  36. Honorary Professor, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, 2007
  37. Special Honorary Professorship, Osaka Prefecture University, Sakai, 2008
  38. University of Patras, 2008
  39. Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, 2008
  40. University of Basilicata, Potenza, 2008
  41. Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, 2009
  42. Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, 2009
  43. University of Ljubljana, 2009
  44. City University of Hong Kong, 2010
  45. Queen's University Belfast, 2012
  46. Honorary Professor, Novosibirsk State University, 2012
  47. Honorary Professor, Xiamen University, 2012
  48. Honorary Professor, Jilin University, 2013
  49. Honorary Professor, Shanxi University, 2013
  50. University of Oxford, 2014
  51. Macau University of Science and Technology, 2015
  52. University of Málaga, 2015
  53. Honorary Professor, Kyushu University, 2016
  54. Honorary Professor, China Pharmaceutical University, 2016
  55. Honorary Professor, Wuhan University of Technology, 2016
  56. Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, 2017
  57. University of Cambridge, 2017
  58. New York University, 2017
  59. University of Bucharest, 2018
  60. University of Vienna, 2019
  61. University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague, 2019

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