From surfactant to cellulose and DNA self-assembly. A 50-year journey

Surfactants have been the basis for applications in several industrial sectors for a long time. However, fundamental research was 50 years ago still limited to a small number of academic groups and even basic aspects were controversial. The field has since undergone an enormous expansion and the improved understanding has laid the basis of numerous new products as well as been the basis of important parts of nano-science and -technology.The present author has during 50 years in academia devoted most of his research to amphiphilic compounds, including both surfactants and polymers. Hereby, I had the privilege of following a very exciting development. In 2015, I had the honour to receive the Life-time Achievement Award of IACIS, the International Association of Colloid and Interface Scientists. IACIS organizes since the 1970s a tri-annual symposium, typically the best attended in the field. For the first time since 2000, it was in 2015 organized in Europe, namely Mainz, Germany. This treatise is based on my award lecture in Mainz, which covered developments from my first research as a new Ph D student in Stockholm to current work as an emeritus and visiting professor. Interestingly, discoveries in my very early work contributed to solving problems in now on-going research. Håkan Wennerström kindly wrote a quite comprehensive paper about my achievements a few years ago (Adv Colloid Interf Sci 205:1–8, [1]). In writing the present paper, I have strived at covering mainly topics not treated in detail by Håkan. In fact, I will emphasize very much our early studies as well as our studies of surfactant self-assembly by NMR and in particular look at the developments of our research and connections between different research topics.