Jacques Vicens: an obituary

On May 2nd, 2020, shortly after his 75th birthday, Jacques Vicens succumbed to a fatal heart attack at his home in Vinça, a town in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains in the south of France where he had returned in retirement to indulge in his lifelong passion for painting. He left behind his wife, Mireille, and their three children, as well as a myriad of friends located around the world.

In his research career, Jacques became internationally prominent as a supramolecular chemist through his work on calixarenes. This culminated in his discovery of calixarene derivatives which showed a remarkable selectivity in their binding of caesium ion and thus proved to be of real utility in the treatment of nuclear waste, where the presence of ¹³⁷Cs, a β and γ emitter with a half-life of 30 years, is a major problem. This work was even recognised in the popular literature as an "invention of the year" [1].

Jacques was born in Marseilles to parents both from Vinça. His mother remained at home to raise Jacques and his older brother, Pierre, who would later graduate from the Ecole Polytechnique and work for the former French telecommunications company, SAGEM. His father worked as an engineer for the French national railroad company (SNCF), having earlier been a mechanic on ships sailing the west coast of Africa and the China seas. His passion for travel and discovery of new cultures was passed on to Jacques, who would lead a very international career as a chemist.

When he was 2 years old, Jacques' family moved to Nice, where he spent the rest of his childhood. He returned to Marseilles as a high school student at the Lycée Thiers, staying there for an additional two years of preparatory study which enabled him to enter the Ecole de Chimie in Strasbourg in 1968. After completing his mandatory military service in 1970–1971, he began his research career with doctoral studies at the University of Strasbourg (then Louis Pasteur University) under the supervision of Jean-François Biellmann. His thesis, based on the chemistry of carbanions derived from sulfoxides and thioethers, was completed in 1977. Subsequently, he carried out postdoctoral studies at the University of Notre Dame de Namur (Belgium, 1978–1979) with Alain Krief and the Weizmann Institute in Rehovoth (Israel, 1979–1980) with Leslie Leiserowitz and Meir Lahav. The second of these positions introduced him to reactions in the crystalline solid state and strongly influenced his later broad research objectives.

In 1981, he accepted an appointment with the CNRS (the French national organisation for scientific research) to work at the Claude Bernard University in Lyon (France) and it was in seeking receptor-containing crystals for possible solid state reactions that he first became interested in calixarenes. Ably assisted in developing this interest by Zouhair Asfari, the synthesis and solution chemistry of calixarenes rapidly became his dominant research activity, leading early on to the discovery of the extraordinarily selective caesium binding of certain calixarenes doubly-bridged by polyether links (the "calixbiscrowns") and international recognition of the significance of this property in the treatment of nuclear waste [2]. In association with the CEA (the French Atomic Energy Commission), he was involved in major European projects concerned with waste treatment and had particularly close links with the groups led by Volker Böhmer in Mainz and Rocco Ungaro in Parma, as well as, following his return to the Ecole de Chimie within the University of Strasbourg in 1988 to establish a laboratory focussed on specificity in molecular interactions, a major collaboration with the group headed by Françoise Arnaud. His later research interests spanned a diversity of topics including dendrimers, sensors and molecular machines, and involved an extended collaboration with Jong Seung Kim of Korea University in Seoul.

Jacques took an almost paternal interest in calixarene chemistry in general, making contacts all around the world with people he saw as sharing his fascination with the field, resulting in prolonged visits to countries such as Japan, South Korea and Australia and the establishment of many profound friendships. He co-edited four major books [3,4,5,6] as well as several symposia in print on calixarenes and was an active referee for many journals, with a particularly substantial contribution to the Journal of Inclusion Phenomena and Macrocyclic Chemistry, for which he was also a member of the Editorial Board. Of his more than 400 research publications, the vast majority concern calixarene chemistry but some also concern the other great theme of his life's work, his painting and his analysis of the many parallels in art and science [7]. Reviews of most of his work on calixarenes may be found in his co-edited books. Jacques retired in 2011 but remained in contact with many of his former colleagues right until his passing.

Jacques will be remembered as an all-too-rare selfless individual who was motivated by a love of science and not by power. He was « cool and humble in spite of being a great organic chemist», as former colleague Sylvia Michel (Strasbourg University, France) wrote to us in an e-mail. He was also a thorough and passionate scientist whose style would not leave one indifferent. He was a gentle but rigorous mentor to countless students and made a point of training people from developing countries. Jacques was a gracious and modest man whom we were privileged to call a friend and (for one of us) father.

(a) Jacques in the company of one of his idols from the world of art ! (b) Two of his recent works (Courtesy Mireille Vicens (top) and Brigitte Kieffer (bottom)).