Jean-Marie Lehn
Short biography
Jean-Marie Lehn holds the Chair of Chemistry of Complex Systems at the University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study (USIAS). He is Honorary Professor at the Collège de France in Paris and Emeritus Professor at the University of Strasbourg, His early work focused on the chemical basis of “molecular recognition”, which plays a fundamental role in biological processes. Over the years these studies led to the definition of a new field of chemistry, which he called “supramolecular chemistry”. In 1987, Jean Marie Lehn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Donald Cram and Charles J. Pedersen. In 2002 he founded the Institut de Science et d’Ingénierie Supramoléculaires (ISIS) in Strasbourg. Author of more than 900 scientific publications and 2 books, he has received numerous international honours and awards.
Towards adaptive chemistry
Chemistry has traditionally been concerned with studying molecules. Supramolecular chemistry studies of supramolecular entities, which possess features as well-defined as those of molecules themselves.
Supramolecular chemistry can perhaps be seen as a sort of “molecular sociology”: non-covalent interactions define the intercomponent bond, the action and reaction, the behaviour of the molecular individuals and populations: their “social” structure as an ensemble of individuals having its own organisation; their stability and their fragility; their tendency to associate or to isolate themselves; their selectivity, their “elective affinities” and class structure, their ability to recognize each other; their dynamics, fluidity or rigidity of arrangements and of castes, tensions, motions and reorientations; their mutual action and their transformations by each other.
Chemistry is progressively unravelling the processes that underlie the evolution of matter towards states of higher complexity and the generation of novel features along the way by self-organization under the pressure of in- formation. The implementation of dynamic features and of selection has led to the emergence of an “adaptive and evolutive chemistry”. Accessing higher-level functions such as training, learning, and decision making represent future lines of development for adaptive chemical systems.
