A talk given by French Academician Christian AMATORE

In the evening of October 17, Professor Christian AMATORE, member of the French Academy of Sciences, professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS-Ulm), Honorary Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry and of the Chinese Chemical Society, visited HUST and gave a talk entitled “Why Science is a wonderful Human art and adventure?” in ICARE.

Prof. Amatore started the talk with a question from audience: can art promote the science research? “I want to say something about my childhood before answering this question,” he said, “My parents immigrated to France from Sicily (Italy) and although they were not very educated, my father told me that even if you are very smart, you will be nothing if you do not receive high quality education”. He was eager to be answered by his parents every time, even though those answers were sometimes entirely wrong, they sounded reasonable for a child. So, “science is a logical affaire. It is undeniable. It is deeply related with human arts. For example, to make music, you have to follow some rules (music theory), just as scientific research must be based on fundamental principles and reality, but that does not mean you cannot imagine and dream.”

Speaking here, Prof. AMATORE presented the story of Archimedes’s discover of buoyancy principle while taking a bath. He was too ecstatic to dress and run nakedly crying that he has found what he was seeking: EUREKA in Greek language. Therefore, we can see that working on science requires imagination and creativity and capacity of dreaming.

In Prof. AMATORE’s opinion, science is also a wonderful adventure. You will always encounter bewildering results in the process of exploring nature, which is similar to his story of hunting rabbits which end up not with rabbits but pheasants and deers. It may be sometimes difficult to explain to people funding research but the most exciting part of research comes from the possibility of unexpected discoveries during the work.

Finally, he indicated that the youth should be acutely aware of his responsibility to earth and environment. He encouraged the students to “strive to become outstanding scientists, to develop and artistic talent and try to work in the field you are the most talented! Devote to science and arts and contribute to the community! "

Besides this amazing talk, Prof. AMATORE gave an academic conference entitled “Neurotransmission and Oxidative Stress: Seeing the Brain Working with Ultramicroelectrodes” in College of Materials Science and Engineering on October 18 morning and a conference in Wuhan University. He also visited labs in School of Life Science and Technology and School Of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering in HUST and Biolake in Optics Valley.

Biography of Prof. Christian Amatore:

Prof. Amatore was educated at Ecole Normale Supérieure, the leading French educational and research center. He is full member of the French Academy of Sciences, honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and of the Chinese Chemical Society, and Director of Research in CNRS. Over the past years he also acted as one of the twenty members of the High Council of Science and Technology which advised the French Governments on scientific matters.

His researches involve the development of advanced electrochemical methodologies for investigating extremely complex mechanisms of organic and organometallic chemistry under the very conditions used by synthetic chemists. Amatore’s activity in kinetics is best illustrated by the rationalization of electron transfer catalysis, electron transfer activation of molecules and more recently by a thorough series of works relative to the elucidation of the most important mechanistic aspects of catalysis by homogeneous palladium complexes, an extremely active area in today’s catalysis for carbon-carbon bond making in fine chemical industry. The well recognized contributions of Amatore’s group in this area have opened new views for rationalizing these important processes which have already led to the development of new synthetic strategies. These works correspond to more than 360 primary research publications, altogether cumulating more than 12,000 citations with a “H-index” of 58