Pierre Braunstein

He graduated from the École nationale supérieure de chimie de Mulhouse (with rank #1) in 1969 and then obtained his doctorate (Dr.Ing.) (under the supervision of J. Dehand) in inorganic chemistry from the Université Louis Pasteur (ULP) in Strasbourg in 1971. He spent the academic year 1971/72 as a post-doctoral fellow at University College London, with Professors Sir Ronald S. Nyholm and Robin J.H. Clark. After defending his state doctorate thesis at the ULP in 1974, he was awarded an Alexander-von-Humboldt fellowship to spend the academic year (1974/75) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) with Professor Ernst Otto Fischer (Nobel Prize laureate).

He spent his entire career at the CNRS where he became an exceptional class Research Director. He has been Director of Research Emeritus since September 2014 and is also a professor "conventionné" at the University of Strasbourg.^[1][2][3]

His research focuses on the inorganic and organometallic chemistry of the transition metals and the main group elements, where he has (co-)authored of more than 580 scientific publications and review articles. They cover impressively diverse areas ranging from the study of metal-metal-bonded complexes, (hetero)nuclear complexes and atomic aggregates,^[4][5] multisite activation of organic substrates,^[6][7] heterometallic clusters with metallophilic interactions between metal ions with complete electronic shells,^[8][9] functional and hemilable ligands (with donor atoms N, P, O, S, N-heterocyclic carbenes,...)^{[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]} phosphinoenolate complexes,^[21] the activation of CO₂ and organic isocyanates and their catalytic recovery,^[22][23] silylated ligands in a heterobimetallic environment,^[24][25] the study of original quinonoid zwitterions with delocalized organic π systems, which promote electronic communication between metal centres,^[26][27] and allow the modification of the electronic properties of the surfaces on which they are deposited.^[28][29] The applications of his work range from various homogeneous catalysis reactions,^[30][31] including the dehydrogenating coupling of stannanes, H-transfer reactions and ethylene oligomerization,^[32][33] to the first use of bimetallic nanoparticles derived from molecular clusters in heterogeneous catalysis.^[34][35]

He has given more than 480 plenary lectures and invited guests to international conferences and institutions and has received numerous awards and honours from France, Germany, China, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. He holds or has held many editorial positions and is regularly called upon to participate in the evaluation of major foreign research programs.

Pierre Braunstein has mentored countless young scientists including ca. 70 PhD students and an equal number of post-doctoral researchers.

He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina,^[36] a corresponding member of the Zaragoza Academy of Sciences (Spain) and the Lisbon Academy of Sciences (Portugal). He is also a member of the Academia Europaea^[37] and the European Academy of Sciences.^[38] Since 2015, he is head of the Chemical Sciences Division of the European Academy of Sciences.