Pierre Laszlo is a French science writer and Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at the University of Liège (Belgium) as well as the École Polytechnique (Palaiseau, France) with earlier positions at Princeton University and the Université d’Orsay, and visiting professorships at the Universities of Connecticut, Kansas, California (Berkeley), Chicago, Colorado, Johns Hopkins, Lausanne, Hamburg, Toulouse and Cornell. He is especially known for his extensive work on nuclear magnetic resonance methodologies and catalysis of organic reactions by modified clays. As a writer, in addition to 10 scientific monographs and textbooks, his books to communicate science to the general public were awarded in 1999 the Maurice Pérouse Prize from the Fondation de France, and in 2004 the Paul Doistau- Emile Blutet Prize from the French Academy of Sciences. Among Pierre Laszlo’s latest published books, the reader can find “Communicating Science. A Practical Guide” which was published by Springer in 2006.
A Life and Career in Chemistry is filled with names of scientists and other more or less remarkable persons whom Laszlo has met and interacted with during his long and varied career. ... Laszlo's autobiography is in many respects of interest to historians of twentieth-century chemistry ... . the portrait of Laszlo himself, his life, and his career that this autobiography offers is very much as its author wants to be remembered. (Helghe Kragh, Ambix, Vol. 69 (4), November, 2022)