Nobel Prize "for the development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity".
Usual matter is made of molecules, which are individual entities, nevertheless their behaviour depends on how they interact with other ones. In fact, these interaction processes among molecules are the key of cell operation and of the chemical and physical properties of many materials.
Professor Lehn was awarded the Nobel Prize, with Professors Pedersen and Cram, for having designed, for the first time, synthetic molecular receptors (hosts) capable of recognizing and interacting, in a selective way, with given guests. He named these receptors "criptands". In this way we obtained synthetic systems capable of making processes of molecular recognition in a selective way.
On such basis, Professor Lehn created and developed a new branch of chemistry called "supramolecular chemistry".
