François and Georgine Diederich at UCLA in 2019. Image credit: Penny Jennings (University of California, Los Angeles, CA).
A proud native of Luxembourg, Diederich became known the world over both for his chemical discoveries and for his warm, lively, and interactive personality. Educated first in Luxembourg and then earning his diploma and doctorate at the University of Heidelberg, Germany with Heinz Staab, Diederich gained early fame for the first synthesis in 1978 of a hydrocarbon that Staab had named “Kekulene” to honor the discoverer of the structure of benzene.
Kekulene, containing 12 fused benzene rings in a planar circular structure, was resynthesized and studied by single-molecule imaging in 2019, and found to have the structural details predicted by Diederich and Staab. By conquering the synthesis of this molecule, Diederich became enamored of carbon-rich molecules that he studied throughout his career.