Jean Rouxel

Jean Marcel Rouxel (February 24, 1935 in Malestroit – March 19, 1998 in Nantes) was a French synthetic chemist known for his work in solid state synthesis of low-dimensional materials. He pioneered the use of solid precursors in soft chemistry.

He synthesized and characterized numerous solids in low dimensions (that is, one or two dimensions) and explored the properties of one-dimensional inorganic chains, such as the phase transition to charge density waves. Another area of research was incommensurable structures in solids and the connection between chemistry and electronic band structure in solids. He studied the mechanisms of anionic polymerization in solids and the competition of anions and cations in redox reactions in solids. He is also working on a type of synthesis based on biological processes, which is called soft chemistry (chimie douce in French), after a word coined by the French chemist Jacques Livage in 1977.

Honors and awards In 1974 he received the CNRS Silver Medal and in 1997 the CNRS Gold Medal and the Prix Paul Pascal from the French Academy of Sciences. In 1992 he was awarded the Gay-Lussac Humboldt Prize. Rouxel received the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award (1993) and gave the Debye Lecture of the Cornell University section of the American Chemical Society. He was Knight of the Legion of Honor (1988, officer from 1997) and officer of the Ordre national du Mérite and commander of the Palmes académiques. In 1988 he became a member of the Académie des sciences and he was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992), the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (1997) and the Indian Academy of Sciences.

Personal life Rouxel had two sons and three daughters with his wife Yannick. He died from ruptured aneurysm.