Edinburgh University Chemistry Class of 1966
You can also use the following shorter address:
Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, widower of Norma Scholan
announced in October 2016, shortly before the Reunion
5th October 2016:
Edinburgh-born Sir James Fraser Stoddard, 74, from Northwestern University in Illinois, was named joint winner of the prestigious award in recognition of his work on tiny motors too small to see with the naked eye.The other two laureates announced at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm were Professor Jean-Pierre Sauvage from the University of Strasbourg, France, and Professor Bernard Feringa, from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Each scientist will receive an equal share of the eight million kronor (£733,000) prize money. The three men played pivotal roles in overcoming the huge challenge of building controllable microscopic machines incorporating atomic-scale rods, rotors and ratchets.Sir James obtained a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1966 and worked in Sheffield and Birmingham before moving to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1997.He was included in the Queen’s New Year’s honours list in 2006 and made a knight bachelor.The award, announced by Professor Goran Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, was “for the design and synthesis of molecular machines”. Each of the molecular devices created by the scientists is more than 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.Yet, magnified up, they operate much like large-scale machinery with rings spinning round axles, components moving to-and-fro along tracks, “elevator” platforms that rise and fall, and artificial contracting “muscles”.Prof Feringa’s research group has even demonstrated a four-wheel drive “nanocar” with a molecular chassis and motors that function as wheels.Future applications of the nanotech devices still remain largely in the realm of science fiction. But they could include tiny medical devices that circulate through the bloodstream cleaning arteries, delivering drugs or performing microsurgery in an echo of the 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage.
Courtesy - The Scotsman.
Baldur Simonarson writes:
It has just been announced that Sir Fraser Stoddart has been awarded one-third of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2016.
http://www.nobelprize.org/
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2016/stoddart-interview.html
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2016/advanced-chemistryprize2016.pdf
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2016/bb-facts.html
As you may know, he was married to the late Norma Scholan who was top of the chemistry class in 1966. She did Biochemistry I (Junior Honours) 1965-1966. She provided a lot of moral support for his group until her untimely death about twelve years ago.
I started following Fraser´s work on supramolecular chemistry in late the 1970´s, and have done so intermittently in the last few years. I only met him once, at a Biochemical Society meeting in the late 1980´s, slightly aware of his Edinburgh background, but I forgot to ask him about it.
In my opinion, he is one of the most brilliant synthetic organic chemists of his generation, and he may even be compared with Robert Woodward. I am not surprised at this honour, he has been a very "hot" candidate for the last five or ten years. Some of his feats are "athletic", like the synthesis of Olympic rings and a molecular lift, maybe powered by light. He certainly has a fertile mind and vivid imagination, and he has said he drew a lot of knowledge from Norma´s background in biochemistry, she did a Ph. D. with George Boyd. I have some material on him somewhere. He did his Ph. D. under the formidable, or maybe redoubtable Douglas Anderson.
John Bone comments: 'I'd say he did well to escape unscathed from the hands of Douglas Anderson, he who insisted that we should all be competent in mouth-pipetting of arsenic solutions ..... '
Lindsay Sawyer notes: Fraser was one of our demonstrators.