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Samir Z. Zard is emeritus professor at Ecole Polytechnique and emeritus Director of Research Exceptional Class in the CNRS. He was born in 1955 in Ife, Nigeria. His training as a chemist started at the American University of Beirut, then at Imperial College, London, and finally at the Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France, where he completed his doctorate under the supervision of Professor Sir Derek Barton in 1983.

His main research has concerned the study and development of new reactions and processes, with a special interest in radicals, organosulfur derivatives, alkynes, and nitro derivatives. His work on the radical chemistry of thiocarbonylthio compounds constitutes the basis of the powerful RAFT/MADIX technology for the industrial manufacture of block copolymers. He is the author and co-author of 395 scientific papers and 39 patents. He has authored one book, “Radical Reactions in Organic Synthesis” (Oxford University Press, 2003), and edited another.

He received a number of academic awards and distinctions, including the Silver Medal of the CNRS (2007), the Presidency of the Bürgenstock Conference (2007), the Grignard-Wittig Award (2008) of the German Chemical Society, the Woodward Lectureship at Harvard University (2010), the Imperial College inaugural Barton Lectureship in Creativity in Organic Synthesis (2012), the Grand Prix Joseph-Achille Le Bel of the French Chemical Society (2012), the Birch Lectureship at the Australia National University (2015), a Honorary Doctorate, from the American University of Beirut (2016), the Distinguished Fellowship of the Chinese Academy of Sciences President’s International Fellowship Initiative (2024). He received in 2007 the Croix de Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.