Lehn, who will turn 76 on the day of the award ceremony, is touring the universities of Twente, Nijmegen, Groningen, and TU/e. The last three have set up the Research Center for Functional Molecular Systems in 2012, which has initiated the Netherlands Award for Supramolecular Chemistry. It will be an annual award.

In 1987, Jean-Marie Lehn, Donald Cram, and Charles J. Pedersen were awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry “for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity”. Lehn is regarded as the founder of supramolecular chemistry, a field that focuses on molecule collections that form larger structures based on weak, reversible bonds such as hydrogen bonds.

At TU/e, and especially at the Institute for Complex Molecular Systems (ICMS), it’s a hot research topic. Accordingly, it has been ICMS that organized the Lehn lecture, with the help of Studium Generale.