Northwestern Professor Wins Nobel Prize

EVANSTON, IL - A Northwestern University professor has been awarded the Nobel Prize.

Sir Fraser Stoddart, the board of trustees professor of chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Stoddart, a native of Scotland, joined Jean Pierre-Sauvage of the University of Strasbourg in France and Bernard L. Feringa of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands as winners of the prestigious award this year.

They were each awarded for “the design and synthesis of molecular machines,” according to a Northwestern news release.

Stoddart is credited with opening up a new field of chemistry when he developed a “rotaxane” in 1991.

“He threaded a molecular ring onto a thin molecular axle and demonstrated that the ring was able to move along the axle,” the Academy wrote in announcing the winners. “Among his developments based on rotaxanes are a molecular lift, a molecular muscle and a molecule-based computer chip.”

Stoddart was added to the faculty at Northwestern in 2008 and is also Director of the Center for the Chemistry of Integrated Systems at the Evanston school.

“This is a tremendous honor for Professor Stoddart and Northwestern University,” Northwestern President Morton Schapiro said. “Fraser is a pioneer in the fields of chemistry and integrated nanosystems and a member of an outstanding chemistry department. The University is proud of his many accomplishments.”

Just prior to joining the faculty at Northwestern, Stoddart 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, according to the release.

He also has quite the list of other honors, too.

Northwestern is planning a ceremony at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday to celebrate Stoddart’s honor. The school will livestream the event here.