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James Fraser Stoddart is
a British
chemist at the Department of
Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of California, Los
Angeles. He works in the area
of
supramolecular chemistry and
nanotechnology. In 2005, the
Institute for Scientific
Information (ISI)
predicted that J Fraser
Stoddart was one of three likely
winners of the 2005
Nobel Prize in Chemistry. ISI
has short-listed Stoddart for the
prize since 2002, based on a
quantitative analysis of total
number of citations of all
currently living chemists, which
they say helps determine the most
influential researchers in the
chemical literature, and therefore
the most likely to win the prize
in the near future. ISI predicted
that Stoddart would win the prize
jointly with
George M. Whitesides and
Seiji Shinkai. One of their
2005 predictions,
Robert H. Grubbs actually won
the prize. They also short-listed
Kyriacos Costa Nicolaou for
the prize in 2005.
Biography
Fraser Stoddart was born 24 May
1942 in
Edinburgh
Scotland. Stoddart received
his
B.Sc. (1964) and
Ph.D. (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 moved to 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.
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
molecular recognition-cum-self-assembly
processes and
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), and the
Nagoya Gold Medal in
Organic Chemistry (2004). 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
is currently on the international
advisory boards of numerous
journals, including
Angewandte Chemie, and the
editor of the
Royal Society of Chemistry
Series of Monographs on
Supramolecular Chemistry. He
is a Fellow of the
Royal Society (1994), the
German Academy of Natural Sciences
(1999), and the
American Association for the
Advancement of Science
(2005).In addition to being made
an Honorary Professor at the
East China University of Science
and Technology in
Shanghai and the Carnegie
Centenary Visiting Professorship
at the Scottish Universities in
2005, Stoddart has been awarded
named lectureships by, inter alia,
the following universities –
Alberta,
Albany (SUNY),
Brigham Young,
Berkeley (UC),
Bristol,
Chicago,
Columbia,
Cornell,
Dalhousie,
Dundee,
Edinburgh,
ETH Zurich,
Hebrew,
Kaiserslautern,
Kansas,
Louvain La Neuve,
McGill,
Minnesota,
Missouri-St Louis,
Montreal,
Notre Dame,
Ohio State,
Pennsylvania,
Regensburg,
Rochester,
Saskatoon,
Simon-Fraser,
Song Sil,
Strasbourg,
Sydney,
Texas Austin,
Texas A&M,
Texas Christian,
Vanderbilt,
Victoria,
Western Ontario,
Wesleyan,
Wisconsin, and
Yale. He has also been Middle
Rhine (1982), Troisičme 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
of Stoddart’s work may be drawn
from citation statistics. Three of
his >730 publications have been
cited over 500 times, seven over
300, 40 over 100, and 126 over 50.
He has an
h-index of 73. For the period
from January 1995 to October 31,
2005, he is ranked by the
Institute for Scientific
Information as the third most
cited chemist with a total of
12,760 citations from 303 papers
at a frequency of 41.7 citations
per paper. During 35 years, >260
PhD and postdoctoral students have
passed through his laboratories
and been inspired by his
imagination and creativity, and
>60 have subsequently embarked
upon successful independent
academic careers.
--Used with permission from
J.F. Stoddart
Research interests
Molecular compounds, comprised
of
mechanically interlocked
components, can now be obtained
efficiently using
template-directed protocols
that rely upon
supramolecular assistance to
covalent synthesis. Since the
weak
noncovalent interactions that
orchestrate the synthesis of such
compounds—e.g.,
catenanes and
rotaxanes—containing
mechanical bonds live on
between the components inside the
molecules thereafter, they can be
activated such that their
components move with respect to
each other in either a linear
fashion (e.g., the ring component
along the rod of the dumbbell
component of a [2]rotaxane
as in a
molecular shuttle) or a rotary
manner (e.g., one ring in a [2]catenane
circumrotating through the other
ring as in a
bistable switch). Thus, [2]rotaxanes
can be likened to
linear motors and [2]catenanes
to
rotary motors. Moreover, these
molecules can be activated by
switching the
recognition elements on and
off between the components
chemically, electrically, and
optically such that they perform
motions—e.g.,
shuttling actions or
muscle-like elongations and
contractions—reminiscent of the
moving parts in macroscopic
machines. Such
motor-molecules and
molecular machines hold
considerable promise for the
fabrication of
sensors,
actuators,
amplifiers and
switches at the
nanoscale level.
Professor Stoddart and his
research group work primarily in
four different areas, recognizing
that chemistry is about three Ms —
Making, Measuring and Modeling:
(1) unnatural product
synthesis that is either
kinetically or
thermodynamically controlled;
(2)
physical organic chemistry,
principally as it relates to
chemical topology and
supramolecular phenomena; (3)
design and construction of
artificial molecular machinery,
with
actuators and
switches particularly in mind;
(4) the application of
nanoscale chemistry to
fundamental problems at the
interfaces with
materials science and the
life sciences. A wide range of
knowledge and skill sets are
required in order to conduct
research effectively and
efficiently in such an inter- and
multidisciplinary environment.
Collaboration is encouraged within
the Stoddart group and beyond.
Presently, it extends
departmentally,
campus wide, and
nationally, as well as into
the international arena in a big
way. In the education of students
—
graduate and
undergraduate — and
postdoctoral scholars, much
emphasis is put on the development
of presentational skills.
Communication is central to the
culture of the group.
During the past two decades,
the Stoddart group has
demonstrated how the emergence of
the
mechanical bond in chemistry
has brought with it a real
prospect of integrating a
bottom-up approach, based on
self-assembly and
self-organization of
motor-molecules, with a
top-down approach, based on
micro- and
nanofabrication, to create
nanomechanical systems in
order to harness, manipulate and
transfer
energy on the nanoscale level.
It is an approach to
nanoscience and
nanotechnology that relies
fundamentally upon concept
transfer from the
life sciences into
materials science. In the
future, Professor Stoddart
anticipates (1) the development of
new (supra)molecular
motors, (2) the designing of
methods to induce them to operate
coherently and controllably on
surfaces and within frameworks
as machines and functioning
devices, (3) the elaboration of
integrated
power supplies to drive the
machines and devices, (4) an
integration of bottom-up and
top-down procedures for the nano-
and microfabrication of
molecularly-driven sensors,
actuators, amplifiers and
switches, (5) an increased
understanding and appreciation of
the science and engineering that
lies behind nanoscale processes,
and (6) the emergence of an elite
cadre of highly trained scientists
and technologists with both broad
perspectives and individual
expertise in the fields of
nanoscience and molecular
nanotechnology. All this and more
is in the nature of the mechanical
bond as it impacts upon
chemistry and beyond.
--Used with permission from
J.F. Stoddart
