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J. Fraser Stoddart
1942–2024 · United Kingdom, United States · Contemporary
Nobel Chemistry 2016
Scottish-American supramolecular chemist who built rotaxanes and catenanes into working molecular machines.
Nobel Prize work
Shared the prize with Jean-Pierre Sauvage and Ben Feringa for the design and synthesis of molecular machines. Stoddart pioneered mechanically interlocked molecules — rotaxanes and catenanes — and turned them into switchable shuttles, elevators and muscles that work at the molecular scale.
Fields
Related topics
Molecular machines and molecular motion
Explore how molecular structures convert light, chemical fuel, or other inputs into controlled motion, and how chemists establish directionality, cycles, and work at the nanoscale.
Self-assembly, host–guest chemistry
Understand how noncovalent recognition organizes molecular components into assemblies, and how host cavities bind guests selectively through complementary shape, interactions, and solvent effects.