Every year, the Inorganic Chemistry Division of the Italian Chemical Society, in collaboration with the Luigi Sacconi Foundation, awards the Luigi Sacconi Medal at its annual meeting to a scientist (Italian or foreign) who has achieved particularly significant results in the field of inorganic chemistry, a field to which Luigi Sacconi made an exceptional contribution.
On September 9, 2025, in Naples, Geneviève Blondin, head of the Metal Physicochemistry in Biology team at the Laboratory of Chemistry and Biology of Metals (LCBM), received this prestigious medal for the international impact of her work.
Presentation of the Sacconi Medal by Mario Chiesa, president of the inorganic chemistry division of the Italian Chemical Society (center), and Maurizio Peruzzini, president of the Luigi Sacconi Foundation (right). (c) Maurizio Peruzzini
Hired by the CNRS in 1992, Geneviève Blondin first worked at the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory at Paris-Sud University in Orsay, where she studied manganese complexes using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy in order to better understand the oxygen release center in plants, a key site in Photosystem II. Arriving at the CEA site in 2006, Geneviève Blondin devoted herself to the application of Mössbauer spectroscopy to various iron-based systems. Among these, Fe-S clusters, present in many proteins, and their synthetic counterparts are at the heart of her interests.
She is the author or co-author of more than 80 publications.