Jean-Marie Lehn, French chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate

Jean-Marie Lehn is a French chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Donald Cram and Charles Pedersen in 1987 for his synthesis of cryptands. Lehn was an early innovator in the field of supramolecular chemistry, i.e., the chemistry of host–guest molecular assemblies created by intermolecular interactions, and continues to innovate in this field. He described the process by which molecules recognize each other. Drugs, for example, "know" which cell to destroy and which to let live. According to information provided by Lehn to the Nobel Foundation in January 2006, his group had published 790 peer-reviewed articles in chemistry literature by then.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine. This award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on proposal of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, which consists of five members elected by the Academy. The award is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on December 10th, the anniversary of Nobel's death.