Sauvage << soh VAHZH >> , Jean-Pierre (1944-…), a French chemist, won a share of the 2016 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research in the field of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is the creation and study of structures that are slightly larger than atoms and molecules . Sauvage shared the prize with the Dutch chemist Bernard L. Feringa and the British-American chemist Sir James Fraser Stoddart .
In 1983, Sauvage made a major breakthrough in nanotechnology. He linked two ring-shaped molecules together. The rings were not held to each other by chemical bonds. Rather, they were looped through each other, like the links of chain. Such a molecular chain is called a catenane.
In 2000, Sauvage expanded on the work of Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, who developed the first rotaxanes. A rotaxane is a molecular “machine” that consists of a positively charged ring wrapped around an “axle.” The axle features two or more electron -rich sites. The positively charged ring is attracted to the negatively charged electrons. When energy is added to the system, the ring will jump from one electron-rich site to another. Sauvage created a rotaxane from two positively charged rings. Each ring had a tail with two electron-rich sites. The rings were looped around each other’s tails, with each tail serving as an axle for the other ring. When such a rotaxane is exposed to metal ions (molecules that have an electric charge), it stretches and contracts like a muscle fiber.
Sauvage was born Oct. 21, 1944, in Paris. He received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Strasbourg, France, in 1971. He joined the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in 1971, becoming a senior researcher there in 1979. He retired from CNRS in 2014.
