# Jean-Marie Lehn

Jean-Marie Lehn (born 30 September 1939) is a French chemist who 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. He described the process by which molecules recognize each other. Drugs, for example, "know" which cell to destroy and which to let live. According to information provided by Lehn to the Nobel Foundation in January 2006, his group had published 790 peer-reviewed articles in chemistry literature by then.

## 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 (assistant professor) 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.
In 1998, he established and directed a research group at the Institute of Nanotechnology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
He is currently a member of the Reliance Innovation Council which was formed by Reliance Industries Limited, India.
As of 2021, Lehn has an h-index of 154 according to Google Scholar and of 137 (946 documents) according to Scopus.

## Legacy

In 1987, Pierre Boulez dedicated a very short piano work Fragment d‘une ébauche to Lehn on the occasion of his Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

## 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:

### French awards and decorations

* CNRS Gold medal (1981; Silver Medal: 1972; Bronze Medal: 1963)
* Knight of the Ordre des Palmes académiques (1989)
* Officer of the Ordre national du Mérite (1993; Knight: 1976)
* Grand Officer of the Légion d'Honneur (2014; Commander: 1996; Officer: 1988; Knight: 1983)

### Other international and national awards

* Elected an International Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences (1980)
* Elected a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1980)
* Humboldt Prize (1983)
* Elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1983)
* Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1987)
* Elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society (1987)
* Pour le Mérite (1990)
* Elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1993
* The Davy Medal of the Royal Society (1997)
* Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class (2001)
* Grand Officer of the Order of Cultural Merit of Romania (2004)
* Gutenberg Lecture Award (2006)
* ISA Medal for Science (2006)
* Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2009)
* Order of the Rising Sun (Gold and Silver Star) of Japan (2019)

### Honorary degrees

Lehn has received numerous Honorary Doctorates, namely from:
* Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1984
* Autonomous University of Madrid, 1985
* Georg-August University of Göttingen, 1987
* Université libre de Bruxelles, 1987
* University of Crete (Iraklion University), 1989
* Università degli Studi di Bologna, 1989
* Charles University of Prague, 1990
* University of Sheffield, 1991
* University of Twente, 1991
* University of Athens, 1992
* National Technical University of Athens (Polytechnical University of Athens), 1992
* Illinois Wesleyan University, 1995
* Université de Montréal, 1995
* University of Bielefeld, 1998
* Honorary Professor, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 1998
* Honorary Professor, Southeast University, Nanjing, 1998
* Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 1998
* Faculté des Sciences Appliquées, Université libre de Bruxelles, 1999
* Nagoya University, 2000
* Université de Sherbrooke, 2000
* Università di Trieste, 2001
* Honorary Professor, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 2003
* Honorary Professor, Nanjing University, 2003
* Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, 2003
* University of St. Andrews, 2004
* Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, 2005
* Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (Technical University, St Petersburg), 2005
* Masaryk University, Brno, 2005
* Honorary Professor, Beijing University, 2005
* Kyushu University, 2005
* Moscow State University, 2006
* Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2006
* Kazan Federal University, 2006
* Novosibirsk State University, 2006
* Honorary Professor, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 2007
* Honorary Professor, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, 2007
* Special Honorary Professorship, Osaka Prefecture University, Sakai, 2008
* University of Patras, 2008
* Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, 2008
* University of Basilicata, Potenza, 2008
* Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, 2009
* Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, 2009
* University of Ljubljana, 2009
* City University of Hong Kong, 2010
* Queen's University Belfast, 2012
* Honorary Professor, Novosibirsk State University, 2012
* Honorary Professor, Xiamen University, 2012
* Honorary Professor, Jilin University, 2013
* Honorary Professor, Shanxi University, 2013
* University of Oxford, 2014
* Macau University of Science and Technology (MUST), 2015
* University of Málaga, 2015
* Honorary Professor, Kyushu University, 2016
* Honorary Professor, China Pharmaceutical University, 2016
* Honorary Professor, Wuhan University of Technology, 2016
* Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, 2017
* University of Cambridge, 2017
* New York University, 2017
* University of Bucharest, 2018
* University of Vienna, 2019
* University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague, 2019

## Books

* Lehn, Jean-Marie (April 1995). Supramolecular Chemistry. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH. ISBN 978-3-527-29311-7.