Jean Marie Lehn: Steps toward Complex Matter: Chemistry!

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Lecture by Dr Jean-Marie Lehn, 1987 Nobel laureate in Chemistry and member of the Molecular Frontiers Scientific Advisory Board, at the Molecular Frontiers Symposium "On Human Origins and the Future of Humanity", at Lund University April 18-19, 2024. The symposium was co-organized with Lund University and the Royal Physiographic Society of Lund.
ABSTRACT:
The evolution of the universe has generated more and more complex forms of matter through self-organization, from particles up to living and thinking matter. Mankind has created science to unravel the ways and means by which matter has become organized up to a thinking organism in particular on our planet earth. Self-organization is the process by which steps towards life and thought have emerged. Animate as well as inanimate matter, living organisms as well as materials, are formed of molecules and of the organized entities resulting from the interaction of molecules with each other. Chemistry provides the bridge and unravels the steps from the molecules of inanimate matter and the highly complex molecular architectures and systems which make up living and thinking organisms. Molecular chemistry has developed very powerful methods for constructing ever more complex molecules from atoms. Supramolecular chemistry seeks to understand and control the formation and behaviour of complex molecular assemblies. The field of chemistry is the universe of all possible structures and transformations of molecular matter, of which those actually realized in nature represent just one world among all the worlds that await to be created. Conceptual considerations on science in general will be presented.