#crytands

[teachersource]

Jean-Marie Lehn was born on September 30, 1939. A French chemist, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Donald Cram and Charles Pedersen in 1987 for his synthesis of cryptands, a family of synthetic bicyclic and polycyclic multidentate ligands for a variety of cations. Lehn was an early innovator in the now flourishing field of supramolecular chemistry, i.e., the chemistry of host–guest molecular assemblies created by intermolecular interactions, and continues to innovate in this field. As of January 2006, his group had published 790 peer-reviewed articles in chemistry literature.