In 2016, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to the former University of Sheffield Lecturer, Sir Fraser Stoddart.

As part of the Sheffield Festival of Science and Engineering, Sir Fraser delivered the Krebs Lecture to a full lecture theatre in The Diamond. Sir Fraser provided an entertaining and informative mix of the chemistry he has pioneered and the people and researchers who have helped him throughout the years.

During the lecture, Sir Fraser spoke about the research performed at the department here in Sheffield into rotaxanes. These are structures where a wheel is trapped around an axle with no covalent bonds between them. The fundamentals of this research led to the identification of the molecular shuttle where the wheel moves between two sites on the axle.

Synopsis

The hurly-burly life of a scientific nomad will be traced through thick and thin from the Athens of the North to the Windy City beside a Big Lake with brief, and not so brief, interludes on the Edge of the Canadian Shield, in the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire, on the Plains of Cheshire beside the Wirral, in the Midlands within the Heartland of Albion, and in the City of Angels beside the Peaceful Sea.

Watch the lecture