Philippe Sautet

[1] He was a research director at the CNRS and works in the chemistry laboratory of the École normale supérieure de Lyon where he devoted a large part of his scientific activity to molecular modelling.

He then took over the management of UMR 5182 (Chemistry Laboratory of the École normale supérieure de Lyon, France) between 2003 and 2010.

He was interested in electronic structures at the solid gas interface, modeling of the elementary stages of heterogeneous catalysis and tunnel microscopy.

[9] He is studying for the first time the adsorption of a chiral molecule on a metal surface, thus showing the establishment of an asymmetric 2D network and its implications for enantioselective heterogeneous catalysis.

This makes it possible to understand the key role of the desorption step of the partially hydrogenated product on selectivity.

[15] It then demonstrates the ability to predict the selectivity of a heterogeneous catalytic reaction by a correlation approach on a polyfunctional molecule (unsaturated aldehyde).

It highlights a new six-centre mechanism for heterogeneous catalytic hydrogenation of butadiene, where the double bond approaches above the hydride.

He was awarded the Catalysis Division of the Chemical Society of France in 1993 and the Descartes-Huygens Prize from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998.