Introduction to the themed issue dedicated to Jean-Pierre Desvergne

摘要

It is with great pleasure that our journal, Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences, has devoted this special issue to Dr Jean-Pierre Desvergne in honor of his lasting contributions to the field of photochemistry and to its development. Jean-Pierre (Fig. 1) is originally from Cognac, a place whose name is synonymous with excellence in spirits and whose people are reputed for their quiet, thoughtful perfectionism. His friends and colleagues might also add a touch of stubbornness to this list, a quality that has served him well throughout his career. These qualities, along with a keen scientific acumen, contributed to Jean-Pierre's success when dealing with difficult research problems, such as demonstrating (back in the 1970s, when topochemical transformations were popular) that in fact it was crystal defects that were at the origin of the intermolecu-lar photoreactivity of anthracene solids.1 This work, done as collaboration between the photochemistry group of H. Bouas-Laurent (University of Bordeaux) and the group of Sir J. M. Thomas (University of Wales) was initiated while Jean-Pierre