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Paper long abstract:

Supramolecular chemistry (SMC), at the interface between chemistry, physics and biology, is a research domain which has grown considerably in the last 40 years.

Jean-Marie Lehn was the first to lay its foundations and formalise its concepts, in a seminal article published in 1978. This work (especially the synthesis of cryptands performed in his laboratory ten years earlier) earned him the 1987 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, which he shared with Charles J. Pedersen (DuPont) and Donald J. Cram (UCLA).

The proposed paper aims to describe the conditions for the emergence of the paradigm of supramolecular chemistry and a research speciality at the University of Strasbourg (France), where Lehn spent the better part of his career. Based on a fieldwork carried out in 2011-2012 completed with an historical analysis, I will list a number of social processes that led to the emergence of this specialty, which found its place thanks to its conceptual developments and encouragement towards openness, rather than confinement.The task that Jean-Marie Lehn and his colleagues embraced was to develop a multidisciplinary chemistry where barriers disappear but where chemistry remains central.This illustrates the "new disciplinarity" put forward by Marcovich and Shinn (2011). I will look also to the legacy of this field of knowledge through a organizational study of the chemistry department, as it is configured today. Following Centellas et al. (2014), I argue that robust disciplinary boundaries may also support, rather than impede, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation.