Jean-Pierre Sauvage

Jean-Pierre Sauvage shared the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on molecular machines. He received the prize with J. Fraser Stoddart and Ben Feringa.

Molecular machines are molecules designed so their parts can move in controlled ways. Sauvage's work was important for mechanically interlocked molecules such as catenanes, where ring-shaped molecules are linked like chain links.

Jean-Pierre Sauvage is a French chemist long associated with the University of Strasbourg. Strasbourg has been a major center for supramolecular chemistry, the field connected to his Nobel-winning work.

In the early 1980s, Sauvage and collaborators developed a metal-template strategy that made catenanes much more accessible to synthesize. That helped turn mechanically interlocked molecules from curiosities into building blocks for molecular-machine research.