🎁What? Ben Feringa turns 75? Hard to believe when one has a chance to listen to him or to talk to him—but it is true: HBT #NobelLaureate Ben Feringa turns 75 today. He was born near Groningen in the Netherlands into a farming family on May 18, 1951, as the second of ten children, and he learned not to shy away from hard work. He studied chemistry from 1969 onwards at the University of Groningen @univgroningen, where he received his PhD in 1978 for work with Hans Wynberg. Among other things, he accomplished a #StereoselectiveSynthesis of #BINOL, which started his lifelong interest in #stereochemistry and #chirality. From 1978 until 1984, he worked at the @Shell Laboratories in Amsterdam and in Sittingbourne, Kent, UK, where he learned the peculiarities of industrial research. In 1984, he returned to his alma mater in Groningen, first as a junior faculty member and, from 1988 onwards, as a full professor; he has remained loyal to this renowned university to this day. Ben Feringa is perhaps most famous for his work on #MolecularMotors, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 2016 together with Jean-Pierre Sauvage and Fraser Stoddart. This is only one of the many topics in #OrganicSynthesis, #SupramolecularChemistry, #MedicinalChemistry—especially #photopharmacology—and #SystemsChemistry to which Ben Feringa’s group has made fundamental contributions. A captivating read is his Nobel Lecture, published in 2017 in @angew_chem: doi.org/10.1002/anie.2017029… Aside from his scientific work, he has served the community in manifold ways: as a member of editorial boards, as a member of illustrious academies, and as a teacher who reaches out to the general public and to young schoolchildren, for whom he published a book—together with Anouk Lubbe—about everyday molecules: deslegte.com/alledaagse-mole… Ben’s motto, “Being a scientist is a way of life,” says it all.