The CNRS silver medal distinguishes researchers for the originality, quality and importance of their work, nationally and internationally recognized.
The medal will be awarded to Jeanne Crassous during a "CNRS Talents" ceremony in November 2023.
Jeanne Crassous (born Costante) studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ENS Lyon); she obtained the Agrégation de Sciences Physiques, option Chemistry (1992). She prepared a PhD thesis at ENS Lyon under the supervision of André Collet, on the absolute configuration of bromochlorofluoromethane (1996). After a postdoctoral period studying the chirality of fullerenes in François Diederich group (ETH Zurich, Switzerland, 1997), she received in 1998 a CNRS researcher position at the ENS Lyon. In 2005, she joined the Institut des Sciences Chimiques de Rennes (ISCR) and the ‘Organometallics, Materials and Catalysis’ (OMC) team, where she is animating a group focused on chiral systems.
Since the beginning of her scientific carrier, she became interested in chirality. She examined stereochemical problems on a variety of chiral structures, such as heterohalogenomethanes, fullerenes, cryptophanes and hemicryptophanes, helicenes and organometallic complexes. With physicists, she is studying fundamental phenomena such as parity violation effects in chiral molecules. She examines in details pure enantiomers by chiroptical techniques (electronic and vibrational circular dichroism, circularly polarized luminescence). She is currently developing the chemistry of heteroatomic and organometallic helicenes and creates original helical structures for applications as chiroptical switches, chiral emitters for OLEDs, magnetochiral or spin-selective systems for spintronic applications.
She is co-author of more than 170 articles and book chapters and has presented her work in more than 60 invited lectures and 65 seminars in laboratories. She is co-author/co-editor of two monographs: « Molécules Chirales: Stéréochimie et Propriétés », 'Editions du CNRS, 2006' and « Helicenes - Synthesis, Properties and Applications », Wiley, 2022.
She is currently coordinating a French national network (GDR CHIRAFUN, Chirality and multifunctionality) and a European ITN Project (HEL4CHIROLEDs, Helical molecules for Chiral OLEDs). She is also currently an elected member of the Executive Board of the DCO-SCF (Division of Organic Chemistry of the French Chemical Society) and member of the Editorial Boards of Chirality and ChemPhysChem (Wiley journals).
She has already received several awards. In 2013, she was elected distinguished junior member of the French Chemical Society (SCF). In 2020, she received the National Prize of the Organic Chemistry Division of the French Chemical Society (DCO-SCF). In 2021, she was elected Member of the European Academy of Science (EurASc) and Fellow of Chemistry Europe (Class 2020/2021).
She would like to warmly thank the CNRS, the Institut de Chimie, the University of Rennes, the ISCR, the OMC team, the PMM group, all the funding agencies, and of course all her (former) students, co-workers and collaborators, technical and administrative staffs, as well as her family, for their continuous support.
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Contact
- Jeanne Crassous, Univ Rennes, ISCR-CNRS UMR 6226, F-35000 Rennes, France
jeanne [dot] crassous
univ-rennes [dot] fr
Published March 2, 2023
