Jean-Pierre Sauvage

Who is Jean-Pierre Sauvage?

Jean-Pierre Sauvage is a French coordination chemist. He has specialized in supramolecular chemistry.

Sauvage was born in Paris in 1944 and obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Louis Pasteur under the supervision of J.-M. Lehn. During his PhD work, he contributed to the first syntheses of the cryptand ligands. After postdoctoral research with M. L. H. Green, he returned to Strasbourg, where he is now emeritus professor.

A prolific scientist, he has worked in several areas including electrochemical reduction of CO₂ and models of the photosynthetic reaction center. A large theme of his work is molecular topology, specifically mechanically-interlocked molecular architectures. He has described syntheses of catenanes and molecular knots based on coordination complexes.

He was elected a correspondent member of the French Academy of Sciences on March 26, 1990, and a member on November 24, 1997. He is currently Professor at the Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg.