Title：My Journey to Stockholm
Speaker：Dr. James Fraser Stoddart
Time：9:30 a.m., Jan. 9th, 2019
Place：The Old Library of Wuhan University
Title：Radical Chemistry in the Design and Synthesis of Artificial Molecular Machines
Speaker：James Fraser Stoddart
Time：9:00 a.m., Jan.10th, 2019
Place：Chuanglong Hall , College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences
Brief Introduction of Professor James Fraser Stoddart
Sir James Fraser Stoddart got his PhD at Edinburgh University in 1966 and is Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry. Sir Fraser is one of the outstanding scientists in area of supramolecular chemistry and nanotechnology. Sir Fraser has published more than 1000 peer reviewed papers on the journal including Nature, Science, Nature Nanotechnology, and Nature Chemistry. As of 2016 Sir Stoddart has an h-index of 124. For the period from January 1997 to 31 August 2007, he was ranked by the Institute for Scientific Information as the third most cited chemist. Sir Fraser was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1994, the Fellowship of Natural Sciences (Leopoldina) of Germany in 1999, and the Foreign membership of Science Division of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006. Stoddart was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the New Year's Honours December 2006, by Queen Elizabeth II. In 2007, he received the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in recognition for his outstanding and pioneering work in molecular machines. He was also elected the Fellowship of American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012 and the Membership of National Academy of Science, USA in 2014. In 2016 Sir Fraser shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Ben Feringa and Jean-Pierre Sauvage for the design and synthesis of molecular machines. He was also elected as one of the “International Educator in China Award” in 2016, the Foreign membership of the Chinese Academy of Science in 2017, and one of the winners of “Chinese Government Friendship Award” in 2017. He has given >1,000 plenary/invited lectures. During 45 years, >400 PhD and postdoctoral students have passed through his laboratories and been inspired by his imagination and creativity, and >80 have subsequently embarked upon successful independent academic careers.
Sir Fraser works in the areas of mechanostereochemistry and molecular machine. He creatively developed a new synthetic molecular machine based on molecular mechanical interlocking structure, and put forward the mechanical bond concept different from the traditional chemical valence bond theory, making a landmark contribution to the further development of the field of chemistry. He and Sauvage developed the template synthesis method based on non-covalent bonding, which greatly improved the synthetic efficiency of mechanical interlocking molecular machines. He created prototypes of thermally driven molecular machines, molecular shuttles, and molecular switches that respond to external stimuli. By building an energy ratchet, he designed and synthesized a true molecular machine that could do work on the outside system -- a molecular pump. Sir Fraser also extended the concept of molecular machines to a variety of applications, such as high-density storage devices based on molecular size. In addition, he not only realized the complex topological systems such as the Olympic ring and Borromean ring at the molecular level, but also organically combined supramolecular chemistry and topology, and proposed the concept of "mechanical stereochemistry", which promoted the development of molecular topology in the field of chemistry. His work on molecular machines with relevant scientists opened a new door in the field of chemistry and brought human to the "mechanical civilization" at molecular dimensions.
