Sir Fraser Stoddart, a pioneer in nanoscience, dies at 82
Stoddart received the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on molecular machines
EVANSTON, Ill. — Nobel laureate Sir Fraser Stoddart, a Board of Trustees Professor at Northwestern University, died Dec. 30 [2024]. He was 82.
Stoddart, a pioneer in the fields of nanoscience and organic chemistry, was an outsized figure on the Evanston campus and on campuses he visited around the globe. By introducing an additional type of bond — the mechanical bond — into chemical compounds, Stoddart became one of the
few chemists to have opened a new field of chemistry during the past 30 years.
His work on molecular recognition and self-assembly and his subsequent introduction of template-directed routes to mechanically interlocked molecules dramatically changed the way chemists make soft materials.
Throughout his long career of research and teaching, Stoddart mentored a diverse group of more than 500 graduate and postdoctoral students from around the world. Gregarious and thoughtful, he particularly cherished this work and the resulting relationships, many of them lifelong.
“Fraser was a giant in fields of nanoscience and organic chemistry, but his influence was equally impressive in the classrooms and labs on our campus,” said Northwestern President Michael Schill. “He was incredibly generous with his time and mentored so many students and
faculty, helping pave important new paths of inquiry and discovery. His impact on our university — and the world — was enormous.”
Omar Faha, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor in Chemistry at Northwestern and chair of the department, said beyond his scientific brilliance, Stoddart was a steadfast friend and mentor, always generous with his time, wisdom and encouragement. “His contributions to our community went far beyond his accolades, as he supported and elevated each of us through his boundless energy and spirit.”
Since 2023, Stoddart was the Chair Professor of Chemistry at the University of Hong Kong.
A Northwestern Nobel
Stoddart received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2016, along with Jean-Pierre Sauvage and Bernard L. Feringa, “for the design and synthesis of molecular machines.” The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences credited them with developing “molecules with controllable movements, which can perform a task when energy is added.”
“The development of computing demonstrates how the miniaturization of technology can lead to a revolution,” the academy said in its announcement. “The 2016 Nobel Laureates in Chemistry have miniaturized machines and taken chemistry to a new dimension.”
For his part, Stoddart was awarded the prize because, the academy said, in 1991 he developed a rotaxane. He threaded a molecular ring onto a thin molecular axle and demonstrated that the ring was able to move along the axle. Among his developments based on rotaxanes are a molecular lift, a molecular muscle and a molecule-based computer chip.
Stoddart’s introduction of the mechanical bond, which has led to the fabrication of artificial molecular switches and motors, has been responsible for putting chemists at the forefront of the burgeoning field of molecular nanotechnology, with implications ranging all the way from information technology to health care.
Upon becoming the second Nobel Prize winner from Northwestern’s department of chemistry, Stoddart expressed his appreciation for the University’s academic community.
“I also share this recognition with my students, postdoctoral fellows and colleagues,” he said. “Northwestern is a special place, where everyone does science in a collaborative way. It happens seamlessly here. If you don’t have the expertise, you can find it, and people step forward without being asked. It is well known that we hunt in packs at Northwestern.”
Said Adrian Randolph, dean of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern: “Sir Fraser brought a sparkling creativity, an indefatigable work ethic, a global perspective and a sharp wit that often reflected his broad interests and his belief in the value of a liberal arts education to his work and life. His scientific findings and ambition will continue to reverberate through the College and University. He will be sorely missed.”
Scientific achievements
Stoddart’s achievements include raising the bar for molecular electronics. For example, he used molecules on the nanoscale as the tiniest of switches, which have been incorporated into the densest of memory chips in a device that can hold the Declaration of Independence but is only the size of a white blood cell. He also gave practical expression to artificial molecular switches using nanovalves planted on the surfaces of mesoporous glass nanoparticles to create controllable and targeted drug delivery systems for the treatment of cancer and other degenerative diseases.
In 2007, The Sunday Times in the U.K. wrote that Stoddart “is to nanotechnology what J.K. Rowling is to children’s literature.”
That same year, he was appointed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as a Knight Bachelor in her 2007 New Year’s Honours List for his services to “Chemistry and Molecular Nanotechnology.”
“After being knighted, the queen and I had a short exchange, and I concluded she had her wits about her and had done her homework,” Stoddart recalled in a 2022 interview with Northwestern Now after the Queen’s passing. He was one of three to receive knighthoods at a ceremony that included other significant honors. “The main subject of conversation among us afterwards was, ‘How did she know so much about me?’”
A native of Edinburgh, Scotland, Stoddart also received the Royal Medal in 2010 from His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh at the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), Scotland’s national academy of arts and sciences.
A common theme of Stoddart’s research was the quest for a better fundamental understanding of self-assembly and molecular recognition processes in chemical systems. He worked for more than three decades on using this growing understanding to develop template-directed protocols that rely upon such processes to create artificial molecular machines. Stoddart’s philosophy of transferring concepts from biology into chemistry was behind his bottom-up approach to the construction of integrated nanosystems.
“My research on mechanically interlocked molecules, which has taken the field of supramolecular chemistry, i.e., chemistry beyond the molecule, back into the molecular domain, heralds a game-changer for molecular nanotechnology,” Stoddart once said.
Northwestern nanoscientist Chad Mirkin said hiring Stoddart was one of the best moves the University made.
“He is a big part of the ‘rise of Northwestern’ story,” said Mirkin, the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry and a professor of medicine, chemical and biological engineering, biomedical engineering, and materials science and engineering. “Generous with his time, intellect and support, he made Northwestern and everyone around him better.”
Other honors and activities
Stoddart was elected to Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012, membership of the National Academy of Sciences in 2014, foreign membership of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2017 and Fellowship of the National Academy of Inventors in 2019.
During his career, Stoddart received many other prestigious national and international awards and honors. They include being elected an Honorary Fellow of both the RSE and the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and receiving the Davy Medal from the Royal Society of London, the national
academy of science of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, of which he was also a Fellow. Other awards include the China International Science and Technology Cooperation Award, the Nagoya Gold Medal in Organic Chemistry, the American Chemical Society’s Arthur C. Cope Award, the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, the King Faisal International Prize in Science, the Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry, the Albert Einstein World Award of Science and the RSC’s Centenary Prize.
Stoddart served on the international advisory boards of numerous journals, including Chemistry World, Organic Letters and ChemPlusChem. He published more than 1,300 scientific papers and trained more than 500 graduate and postdoctoral students during an academic career that spanned five decades.
Northwestern professor Will Dichtel was one of Stoddart’s postdoctoral researchers.
“Underlying his considerable accolades was an endlessly supportive and caring mentor, colleague and friend. I was fortunate to learn from him first as a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA, just before he moved to Northwestern, where he encouraged my creativity and courage to tackle big scientific problems,” said Dichtel, the Robert L. Letsinger Professor of Chemistry.
“Later, in my independent career, he continued to support, encourage and challenge me. Fraser played this role to hundreds of scientists around the world. We will all miss him dearly and take this sad occasion to reflect upon and acknowledge his considerable personal and scientific
impact.”
Prior to Northwestern
Before joining the Northwestern faculty, Stoddart was Fred Kavli Chair in Nanosystems Sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles and director of the California NanoSystems Institute. He came to UCLA in 1997 from England’s University of Birmingham, where he had been a professor of organic chemistry since 1990 and had headed the university’s School of Chemistry since 1993.
Born in Edinburgh in 1942, Stoddart received his Bachelor of Science (1964), Ph.D. (1966) and D.Sc. (1980) degrees from the University of Edinburgh.
In 1967, he moved to Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, where he was a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow and then, in 1970, to England’s University of Sheffield, where he was first an Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) research fellow before becoming a faculty lecturer (assistant professor) in chemistry. After spending a three-year “secondment” (1978 to 1981) at the ICI Corporate Laboratory in Runcorn, England, he returned full time to the University of Sheffield,
where he was promoted to a readership (associate professorship). He moved to the University of Birmingham in 1990 to take up the Chair of Organic Chemistry.
Survivors include his two daughters, Fiona McCubbin of Belmont, Massachusetts, and Alison Stoddart of Cambridge, UK, and five grandchildren. His wife, Norma, preceded him in death.
