Jean-Marie Lehn

Supramolecular chemistry is the chemistry of the intermolecular bond, covering the structures and functions of the entities formed by association of two or more chemical species.

I was promoted associate professor in early 1970 and full professor in October of the same year. I spent the two spring semesters of 1972 and 1974 as visiting professor at Harvard University, giving lectures and directing a research project.

Receptor chemistry, the chemistry of artificial receptor molecules, may be considered a generalized coordination chemistry, not limited to transition metal ions but extending to all types of substrates: cationic, anionic or neutral species of organic, inorganic or biological nature.

I was born on September 30, 1939, in Rosheim, a small medieval city of Alsace in France. My father, Pierre Lehn, then a baker, was very interested in music, played the piano and the organ, and became, later, having given up the bakery, the organist of the city. My mother Marie kept the house and the shop.

My first scientific paper in 1961 reported an additivity rule for substituent-induced shifts of proton NMR signals in steroid derivatives.

In 1998, I set up and directed a research group at the Nanotechnology Institute newly created in the Research Center of Karlsruhe. This allowed to offer to former post-doctoral coworkers the opportunity to develop and to progressively set up independent research activities in nanoscience and nanotechnology.

Molecular chemistry, the chemistry of the covalent bond, is concerned with uncovering and mastering the rules that govern the structures, properties and transformations of molecular species.

Supramolecular chemistry, the designed chemistry of the intermolecular bond, is rapidly expanding at the frontiers of molecular science with physical and biological phenomena.