Jean-Marie Lehn 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. As of January 2006, his group has published 790 peer-reviewed articles in chemistry literature.
Lehn in 2018
A circular helical assembly reported by Jean-Marie Lehn et al. in Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. Engl. 1996, 35, 1838–1840.
Crystal structure of a foldamer reported by Lehn et al. in Helv. Chim. Acta., 2003, 86, 1598–1624.
Donald James Cram was an American chemist who shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Jean-Marie Lehn and Charles J. Pedersen "for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity." They were the founders of the field of host–guest chemistry.
Crystal structure of a nitrobenzene bound within a hemicarcerand reported by Cram and coworkers