Jean Fréchet


Jean M.J. Fréchet is an American chemist and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the head of the Division of Materials Synthesis and Materials Science of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Director of the Organic and Macromolecular Facility for the Molecular Foundry at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Vice-President for research at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. He has authored nearly 900 scientific papers and holds over 70 United States patents. His research areas include organic synthesis and polymer chemistry applied to nanoscience and nanotechnology with emphasis on the design, fundamental understanding, synthesis, and applications of functional macromolecules.
Fréchet is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Engineering, and the Academy of Europe.

Education and Academic Career

Jean Fréchet received his first university degree at the Institut de Chimie et Physique Industrielles in Lyon, France, before coming to the US for graduate studies in organic and polymer chemistry at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and at Syracuse University. He joined the Chemistry Faculty at the University of Ottawa in Canada in 1973, and remained there until 1987, when he became IBM Professor of Polymer Chemistry at Cornell University. In 1995 he was named to the Peter J. Debye Chair of Chemistry at Cornell University. In 1997, Jean Fréchet joined the Chemistry Faculty at the University of California, Berkeley and was named the Henry Rapoport Chair of Organic Chemistry in 2003 and Professor of Chemical Engineering in 2005. In June 2010 he took an 18-month leave of absence from his position at Berkeley to act as Vice President Research at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.