Organic chemist and nanoscientist Fraser Stoddart dies at 82

Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, Chair Professor in Chemistry at the University of Hong Kong, died Dec. 30, 2024, at the age of 82. He was on holiday in Australia with his family.

Stoddart shared the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Jean-Pierre Sauvage of the University of Strasbourg and Ben L. Feringa of the University of Groningen for their work on artificial molecular machines.

Stoddart was well known for his group’s synthesis of mechanically interlocked molecules, including interlocked rings, known as catenanes, and rings encircling rods, known as rotaxanes. These molecules became the foundation for artificial molecular switches and machines and helped establish the concept of the mechanical bond. “A mechanical bond is an entanglement in space between two or more component parts, such that they cannot be separated without breaking or distorting chemical bonds between atoms,” Stoddart wrote with coauthor Carson J. Bruns in his 2016 book The Nature of the Mechanical Bond: From Molecules to Machines.

Born in 1942 in Edinburgh, Stoddart earned his PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 1966 and held many positions throughout his long career in chemistry. He was a National Research Council of Canada Research Fellow at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He then moved to the University of Sheffield, where he was an Imperial Chemical Industries Research Fellow before joining the school’s academic faculty. In 1990, he moved to the University of Birmingham and in 1997 joined the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles. Stoddart moved again in 2007 to Northwestern University and finally joined the faculty at the University of Hong Kong in 2023.

Feringa describes Stoddart as a “good friend, good colleague, and an outstanding scientist” who possessed tremendous energy and enthusiasm for chemistry.

The University of Manchester’s David Leigh, who earned his PhD as part of Stoddart’s group in the 1980s, says, Stoddart’s “real legacy is how he touched scientists’ lives; he just inspired whole generations of scientists and chemists.” He was supportive of students, collaborators, and even his competitors, Leigh says.

Stoddart was also well known for encouraging young chemists. For example, he was a champion of the American Chemical Society’s Project SEED, which offers chemistry research opportunities for economically disadvantaged high school students.

Writing in his Nobel Prize autobiography, Stoddart said, “I have been immensely privileged to be able to practice my hobby almost every day of my life in the presence of highly intelligent and outstandingly gifted young people.”