general
Short Career History
Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry
Northwestern University
BSc Edinburgh University 1964
PhD Edinburgh University 1966
DSc Edinburgh University 1980
National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow – Queen’s University (Canada)
Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) Research Fellow – Sheffield University |
Fraser Stoddart (b 1942) received his BSc (1964) and PhD (1966) degrees
from Edinburgh University. In 1967, he went to Queen’s University
(Canada) as a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow, and then,
in 1970, to Sheffield University as an Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI)
Research Fellow, before joining the academic staff as a Lecturer in
Chemistry. He was a Science Research Council Senior Visiting Fellow at
the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1978. After spending
a sabbatical (1978-81) at the ICI Corporate Laboratory in Runcorn, he
returned to Sheffield where he was promoted to a Readership in 1982. He
was awarded a DSc degree by Edinburgh in 1980 for his research into
stereochemistry beyond the molecule. In 1990, he took up the Chair of
Organic Chemistry at Birmingham University and was Head of the School of
Chemistry there (1993-97) before moving to UCLA as the Saul Winstein
Professor of Chemistry in 1997. In July 2002, he became the Acting
Co-Director of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI). On May 1,
2003, he was appointed the Director of the CNSI and assumed the Fred
Kavli Chair of NanoSystems Sciences. He stood down from the former on
July 31, 2007 and relinquished the latter on December 31, 2007 in order
to join the faculty at Northwestern University as a Board of Trustees
Professor of Chemistry on January 1, 2008. On March 1, 2008, he was
appointed an Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at UCLA. He is also Director
of the Center for the Chemistry of Integrated Systems (CCIS) at Northwestern
University.
Stoddart is one of the few chemists of the past quarter of a century to
have created a new field of organic chemistry — namely, one in which the
mechanical bond is a pre-eminent feature of molecular compounds. He has
pioneered the development of the use of molecular recognition and
self-assembly processes in template-directed protocols for the syntheses
of two-state mechanically interlocked compounds (bistable catenanes and
rotaxanes) that have been employed as molecular switches and as
motor-molecules in the fabrication of nanoelectronic devices and
NanoElectroMechanical Systems (NEMS).
His work has been recognized by many awards, including the Carbohydrate
Chemistry Award of The Chemical Society (1978), the International Izatt-Christensen
Award in Macrocyclic Chemistry (1993), the American Chemical Society’s
Cope Scholar Award (1999), the Nagoya Gold Medal in Organic Chemistry
(2004), the King Faisal International Prize in Science (2007), the
Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry (2007), the Albert
Einstein World Award of Science (2007), the Foresight Nanotech Institute
Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology (Experimental) (2007), the American
Chemical Society’s Cope Award (2008), and the Royal Society's Davy Medal
(2008). He was one of ca. 20 research
scientists to be invited by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to
participate in the Nobel Jubilee Symposium on “Frontiers of Molecular
Sciences” in Stockholm in December 2001. In 2005, he received the
Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science from Birmingham University, as well
as being the recipient of the University of Edinburgh Alumnus of the
Year 2005 Award. He received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science from the University of Twente (2006),
Sheffield University (2008), Trinity College Dublin (2009), and the University of St Andrews (2010).
He is currently on the international advisory boards of
numerous journals, including Chemistry World, ChemPlusChem, Macromolecular Rapid Communications and Organic Letters. He is editor-in-chief of Applied Nanoscience.
He is a Fellow of the
Royal Society (1994), the German Academy (Leopoldina) of Natural
Sciences (1999), the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(2005), and the Science Division of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts
and Sciences (2006). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2012) and the National Academy of Sciences (2014). He is an honorary fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh (2008) and the Royal Society of Chemistry (2011). 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. In 2010 he was the recipient of a Royal Medal, granted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and presented
by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
In
addition to being made an Honorary Professor at (i) the East China
University of Science and Technology (2005) in Shanghai, (ii) Jilin University (2012) in Changchun as well as the Carnegie
Centenary Visiting Professor at the Scottish Universities in 2005 and a World Class University (WCU) faculty at the Korea
Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 2011 and 2012, Stoddart has been awarded named lectureships by, inter alia, the
following universities — Alberta, Alabama, SUNY Albany, Appalachian State,
Arkansas, Australian National University, Baylor, Brigham Young, Berkeley, Bristol, Chicago,
Columbia, Cornell, Dalhousie, Dartmouth, Dundee, Edinburgh, ETH Zurich, Georgia Institute of Technology, Hebrew Jerusalem,
Illinois Institute of Technology, Iowa, John Innes Center, Hamilton, Kaiserslautern, Kansas, Karlsruhe,
Louvain La Neuve, Manitoba, Meadville, McGill, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri-St Louis, Montreal,
Nevada, New Orleans, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Purdue, Queen's Kingston, Regensburg,
Rochester, Saskatoon, Simon-Fraser, Song Sil, Strasbourg, Stony Brook, Sydney, Texas
Austin, Texas A&M, Texas Christian, Vanderbilt, Victoria, Wesleyan, West Florida,
Western Ontario, Wichita State, Wisconsin, and Yale. He has also been Middle Rhine
(1982), Troisième Cycle en Chemie (1988), and Atlantic Coast (1993)
Lecturer. He went on Royal Society Lecture Tours of the USSR and Japan
in 1986 and 1987, respectively.
Some measure of the influence and impact of Stoddart'’s work may be drawn
from citation statistics. Three of his >1,000 publications have been cited
over 1,000 times, 15 over 500, 27 over 300, 157 over 100, and 335 over 50. He has an
h-index of 124. He has given >1,000 plenary/invited lectures. During 45 years, >400 PhD and postdoctoral
students have passed through his laboratories and been inspired by his
imagination and creativity, and >80 have subsequently embarked upon
successful independent academic careers. |