On the evening of Nov 2^nd, Prof. Jean-Marie Lehn, Father of Supramolecular Chemistry in French, Nobel Prize Laureate delivered a speech “From Matter to Life: Chemistry?Chemistry!” on Campus Zijingang, Zhejiang University. He encouraged the students to keep the faith “We must know，We will know” in the scientific innovation.

Prof. Lehn, 71-year old, created a new chemistry field-- Supramolecular Chemistry. In 1968, he achieved the synthesis of cage-like molecules, comprising a cavity inside which another molecule could be lodged. This was the premise for an entire new field in chemistry, sensors. Such mechanisms also play a great role in molecular biology. He received the Nobel Prize together with Donald Cram and Charles Pedersen in 1987 for his work in Chemistry.

In retrospect of the evolution from the big bang ten billion years ago to now, he pointed out that both the life and none-life material was organically made of molecules. Chemistry builds up a bridge between material molecules and highly complex life systems. Everything in the universe is connected with chemistry.

Traditional chemistry was focused on the molecule characteristic by the electron pair bond between atoms, while Lehn paid more attention to the weak but recoverable power between molecules. Synthetic chemistry has developed a strong method to construct more complex molecules, while Supramolecular Chemistry controls the molecule group formation by the interaction between different ingredients, which reveals the new material states.

Lehn used DNA construction to show how molecules combine with each other. To explain the principle he displayed a traditional Chinese painting. In the painting two Medusas mingled with each other like the double helix. He emphasized that the molecules’ self-assemble is based on the molecule identification like the key to the lock.

He said that the self-assemble is more important once the chemistry is introduced to the information. The designed organic construction can be programmed to deal with the molecule level information, which combines chemistry and information together. He predicted that those species existing in the nature just represented one possible world, while others were waiting to be created. His prophet will be proved in the coming experiment.