Nearly 35 years ago, Sir Fraser Stoddart changed what was possible when building machines the size of a blood cell.
The Edinburgh native was one of three scientists awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2016 for creating machines the size of cells and related innovations in nanoscience, having “taken chemistry to a new dimension,” according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awarded the prize.
The pioneering Northwestern University chemist died Monday. He was 82.
Mr. Stoddart built on the work of one of his fellow honorees in 1991 by threading a molecular ring onto a molecular axle and moving it back and forth, according to the Nobel Committee. Three years later, he could control the movement and eventually built a molecule-sized muscle and elevator.
Chad Mirkin, director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology and the Northwestern nanoscience researcher responsible for bringing Mr. Stoddart to the school, said it was clear early on that Mr. Stoddart was a Nobel candidate.
“Everyone knew he was doing something really spectacular in chemistry,” Mirkin told the Sun-Times Thursday. “That changed the way people thought. … We won’t know for decades what the technological impact of his work will be, but fundamentally, he has changed what’s possible.”
A year after being knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2007, Mr. Stoddart became a faculty member at Northwestern University and gained U.S. citizenship three years later. He was named the chair professor of chemistry at the University of Hong Kong in 2023.
Before that, he earned his doctorate at the University of Edinburgh in 1966 and studied at Queen’s University, the University of Sheffield, the University of Birmingham and UCLA. Throughout his time as a researcher, Mr. Stoddart published more than 1,250 works.
His innovation in making the world’s smallest machines eventually led to memory chips the size of white blood cells and molecular motors, and could one day lead to the creation of controllable medication delivery for cancer patients.
Will Dichtel, a Northwestern chemistry professor, was one of Mr. Stoddart’s postdoctoral research students at UCLA who worked with him on the memory-storing molecules.
He said Mr. Stoddart’s excellence extended outside the field and into the classroom, where he would motivate them to think outside whatever boundaries they thought existed.
“He was so comfortable with himself in terms of who he was and what he had accomplished,” Dichtel said. “All he wanted to do was encourage others to have that as well.”
Outside the lab, though, Mirkin said Mr. Stoddart had an eye for beauty in everyday life and loved his family.
“He was almost poetic, he had ways of describing people and things that very few could emulate,” Mirkin said. “He was not only a great scientist, he was one of my best friends and someone I turned to often for advice. He just knew how to carry himself.”
His wife, Norma, died of cancer in 2004. He is survived by his two daughters, Fiona McCubbin and Alison Stoddart, and five grandchildren.
His research and legacy, though, survive in his students and others he’s inspired across the world.
“He’s trained people like me and hundreds of others at universities across the world, and we’re all carrying on the field,” Dichtel said. “All of us were taught to think about chemistry in a way where we’re all very heavily influenced by his thinking. … [and] we’re all inspired to carry on his legacy.”
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