André Collet

André Collet was a full professor at the University of Lyon and senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. His career began at the Collège de France and ended at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Lyon where he founded the "Stéréochimie et Interactions Moléculaires" Laboratory. André Collet was born in Brittany and studied at the University Paris VI. He was appointed as CNRS researcher in 1968 and defended his PhD in 1973 at the Collège de France under the supervision of Jean Jacques. At this time, he started to focus his research on molecular chirality and sterochemistry and, more precisely, on racemate resolution. After a postdoctoral internship at the ETH Zurich under the supervison of Prof. J. F. M. Oth, he returned to the Collège de France in 1975 where he mainly worked on molecular recognition.

Since 1984, when he became Research Director at the CNRS, he worked on fundamental and practical aspects of chiral resolution by crystallization and developed a new family of molecular cavitands called cryptophanes. He was appointed full professor in Lyon in 1988 and initiated the creation of the new UMR 5532 at the ENS of Lyon where he continued his research on stereochemistry and molecular interactions. His standing in the field of supramolecular chemistry and chirality was mainly due to his results on chiral molecular recognition based on cryptophanes. André Collet authored more than 160 articles and co-authored two books. One of them, “Enantiomers, Racemates and Resolutions”, issued in 1981 in the USA and reissued in 1994, is considered a worldwide reference in the field of chirality. He presented more than 140 invited lectures and was awarded for his scientific work by several prizes, including the « Prix de la division de Chimie organique de la Société Française de Chimie (1984) »; « Prix Jecker de l'Académie des Sciences (1991) »; « Prix scientifique Philip-Morris (1997) ».

André Collet was member of the American Chemical Society, of the Royal Society of Chemistry and of the Société Chimique de France. He was also involved in the editorial committees of many international journals. In 1997 he was distinguished with the Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite.

Chantal Andraud, Jean-Pierre Dutasta