Jean-Pierre Launay

Jean-Pierre Launay was born in 1944 in Pyrénées Atlantiques, south-west of France. After studies at Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) de Saint-Cloud (now at Lyon), and success at “Agrégation de Chimie”, he prepared a thesis at Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris and defended it in 1974. He was assistant-professor and professor at this University until 1989 when he moved to Toulouse at Université Paul Sabatier, with research activity in a CNRS laboratory “Centre d’Elaboration de Matériaux et d’Etudes Structurales” (CEMES). He leaded the laboratory from 2003 to 2010 and is now Emeritus Professor.

While in Paris his research themes were about electrochemistry of polyoxoanions and electron transfer, in Toulouse he developed Molecular Electronics and Nanosciences by using molecules specially designed to play the role of molecular devices or even molecular machine elements of nanometric dimensions. This kind of study necessitates a close association of Physics and Chemistry, as well as the intermixing of experiment and theory. He taught general, physical and inorganic chemistry. He is author of ca 130 papers in scientific journals and delivered more than 50 invited international conferences.

He has been member of the “Institut Universitaire de France” (IUF) for his research activity and received the “Palmes Académiques”, a teaching distinction.

Besides academic activities, he is fond of outdoor activities, like traveling, skiing and sailplane gliding.

“Electrons in Molecules”, written with Michel Verdaguer, is his first book. The two authors want to present in a unified way a number of properties of molecules under different forms (single molecules, molecular materials, molecular devices), trying to show the link between electrical, magnetic and photophysical aspects, combining them in a final chapter on Molecular Electronics.