On April 16th, Jean-Pierre Sauvage, laureate of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and academician of French Academy of science, visited HZAU and gave a lecture titled “Molecular Machines in Biology and in Chemistry” at the Lecture Hall of the National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement.
Prof. Sauvage first visited the National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement. He was deeply impressed by the advanced equipment in the laboratory and showed great interests in the pictures of golden rape flowers fields in HZAU.
Then, the Honorary Professor Award Ceremony was held in the Lecture Hall. Prof. Sauvage was granted the title of Honorary Professor of HZAU by President Deng Xiuxin. President Deng then gave a welcome speech in English, and the students and faculty on site also greeted the Professor with the warmest applauses.
Starting with two examples of important biological molecular machines, Prof. Sauvage introduced the concepts of molecular topology and molecular machine, and then he shared with us his major research experiences: he and his research team synthetised catenane in 1983, after that, they put great effort into the research of rotaxane and molecular motor, and finally they succeeded in the design and synthesis of molecular machine. Prof. Sauvage also mapped out a blueprint of molecular machine’s application in synthetic artificial muscles and in electronic storage.
At the end of the lecture, Prof. Sauvage shared some of his precious photos taken at the Nobel Prize Awarding Ceremony. In addition to sharing the joy of success, he also wanted to remind the students that they will encounter many setbacks in scientific research and sometimes they have to start all over again, for science can hardly develop as planned.
The lecture was really wonderful and attracted hundreds of attendees in the hall, and more on the line. The audience were impressed by Prof. Sauvage’s research and also inspired by his rigorous and innovative academic spirit and his passion for science. His brilliant speech can not only offer us more insight into the latest frontier knowledge and development tendency of biological molecular machine research but broaden our innovative thinking and research vision to explore academic frontier.

Editor: Yan Qiaoli
Revised&proofread by Wang Xiaoyan