Paris-Born Chemist Jean-Pierre Sauvage Wins Nobel Prize

What would you do if you won a Nobel Prize? Jean-Pierre Sauvage opened a bottle of champagne – a timeless, respectable way to celebrate an achievement or milestone (or, frankly, just a Saturday). Sauvage had ample cause for celebration, as he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry on Wednesday, October 5, 2016. Speaking with radio station France Info on Wednesday after the news was announced, Sauvage sounded elated, and noted how he chose to celebrate by uncorking champagne. As the news spread, French media outlets pumped out celebratory headlines on Wednesday: Le Monde: “Le prix Nobel de chimie attribué à Jean-Pierre Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart et Bernard L. Feringa” Le Figaro: “Un Français parmi les lauréats du prix Nobel de chimie” Paris Match: “Le Prix Nobel de chimie décerné à un Français et deux autres chimistes” The best headline came from Libération: “Nobel de chimie: «Imaginez, de minuscules robots dans nos veines»…” (“Imagine, tiny robots in our veins…”) Sauvage is a coordination chemist, and he works at Université de Strasbourg as an emeritus professor. His speciality is supramolecular chemistry. Paris-born Sauvage received his Ph.D. from Université Louis-Pasteur, where he made significant contributions to the syntheses of cryptand ligands. In 1997, he was named a member of the esteemed French Academy of Sciences, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV. The French chemist shares the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with two others: Sir James Fraser Stoddart (from Edinburgh, UK) and Bernard L. Feringa (from Groningen, Netherlands). The trio was awarded the prize for “the design and synthesis of molecular machines,” said the Nobel Prize committee, which is comprised of five people chosen by the Norwegian Parliament. The prize money, 8 million Swedish kronor (€830,781), will be split among the three. Sauvage can drink bottles of Dom Pérignon for years to come.