Crystal structure of acatenane reported by Sauvage and coworkers in the Chem. Commun., 1985, 244–247.[1]Crystal structure of amolecular trefoil knot with two copper(I) templating ions bound within it reported by Sauvage and coworkers in Recl. Trav. Chim. Pay. B., 1993, 427–428.[2]
Sauvage was born in Paris in 1944,[4] and earned hisPhD degree from theUniversité Louis-Pasteur under the supervision ofJean-Marie Lehn, himself a 1987 laureate of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. During his doctoral work, he contributed to the first syntheses of thecryptand ligands.[5] After postdoctoral research withMalcolm L. H. Green, he returned toStrasbourg, where he is now emeritus professor.
Sauvage's scientific work has focused on creating molecules that mimic the functions of machines by changing their conformation in response to an external signal.[6]
His Nobel Prize work was done in 1983, when he was the first to synthesize acatenane, a complex of twointerlocking ring-shaped molecules, which werebonded mechanically rather than chemically. Because these two rings can move relative to each other, the Nobel Prize cited this as a vital initial effort towards makingmolecular machine. The other two recipients of the prize followed up by later creating arotaxane and amolecular rotor.[7][8]
^Cesario, M.; Dietrich-Buchecker, C. O.; Guilhem, J.; Pascard, C.; Sauvage, J. P. (1985). "Molecular structure of a catenand and its copper(I) catenate: complete rearrangement of the interlocked macrocyclic ligands by complexation".Journal of the Chemical Society, Chemical Communications (5). Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC): 244.doi:10.1039/c39850000244.ISSN0022-4936.
^Albrecht-Gary, A. M.; Meyer, M.; Dietrich-Buchecker, C. O.; Sauvage, J. P.; Guilhem, J.; Pascard, C. (1993). "Dicopper (I) trefoil knots: Demetallation kinetic studies and molecular structures".Recueil des Travaux Chimiques des Pays-Bas.112 (6). Wiley:427–428.doi:10.1002/recl.19931120622.ISSN0165-0513.
