On 15 March 2023, the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava awarded the title of doctor honoris causa to two Nobel laureates in chemistry. At a ceremonial meeting of the University’s Scientific Council, Professor Bernard L. Feringa from the University of Groningen and Jean-Marie Lehn from the University of Strasbourg received the special scientific awards.
According to the rector of the Slovak University of Technology, Oliver Moravčík, this was the first time that two Nobel Prize winners for the same field have come to Slovakia and to one university. Both laureates have been collaborating with Slovak scientists for years and have also involved some of them in their research teams.
Bernard L. Feringa was born in the Netherlands, where his family had a farm. He studied at the University of Groningen, where he received his PhD in 1978. Sciencewise he has contributed to the development of molecular machines. For example, in 1999 he constructed a molecular motor by making a molecular rotor blade continuously spin in the same direction. In 2016 together with his colleagues Jean-Pierre Sauvage and Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the design and synthesis of molecular machines”.
Bernard Feringa
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Jean-Marie Lehn was born in 1939 in France. His father, Pierre Lehn, then a baker, was very interested in music, played the piano and the organ and became later, having given up the bakery, the organist of the city. Since his high school studies, Jean Marie Lehn became interested in sciences – both natural and humanities. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1963, following which he spent a year in the laboratory of Robert Burns Woodward at Harvard University, where he took part in the immense enterprise of the total synthesis of Vitamin B12. In 1987, together with his colleagues Donald J. Cram and Charles J. Pedersen, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity”.
Jean-Marie Lehn
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