Portrait of Jean-Marie Lehn

Birthday profile

Jean-Marie Lehn

Jean-Marie Lehn, French chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate

Born
September 30, 1939
Age in 2026
87
Zodiac sign
Libra
Birth year
1939

About Jean-Marie Lehn

Jean-Marie Lehn is a French chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Donald Cram and Charles Pedersen in 1987 for his synthesis of cryptands. Lehn was an early innovator in the field of supramolecular chemistry, i.e., the chemistry of host–guest molecular assemblies created by intermolecular interactions, and continues to innovate in this field. He described the process by which molecules recognize each other. Drugs, for example, "know" which cell to destroy and which to let live. According to information provided by Lehn to the Nobel Foundation in January 2006, his group had published 790 peer-reviewed articles in chemistry literature by then. There, he was in charge of the lab's first NMR spectrometer, and published his first scientific paper, which pointed out an additivity rule for substituent induced shifts of proton NMR signals in steroid derivatives.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Jean-Marie Lehn was born

Jean-Marie Lehn was born in 1939. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1939

  • #1 song"Over the Rainbow" – Judy Garland
  • Top movieGone with the Wind
  • Best-selling bookThe Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentLou Gehrig delivers his "Luckiest Man" farewell speech
  • Top headlineGermany invades Poland — World War II begins
  • Technology milestoneFirst regular television broadcasts in the US (NBC)
  • Defining fadThe Wizard of Oz mania
  • Notable inventionNylon stockings
  • World population2.30 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderFranklin D. Roosevelt
  • Sports championNew York Yankees (World Series)
  • U.S. population130.9M

1939 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Jean-Marie Lehn's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19392026
Gas$0.19$3.45/gal
Average home$5,200$435,000
Average income$2,900$67,500
Minimum wage$0.30$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.25$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population130.9M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.