On Jan. 14 this year, an obituary caught my eye which captured the life and contributions to chemistry of Fraser Stoddart who, as the New York Times put it, “built machines out of molecules,” and won a Nobel Prize in 2016 for doing so.
Our annual reviews of Nobel prizes at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library began in 2017, and so missed his 2016 achievement and what an extraordinary man Stoddart was together with his fellow laureates, Jean-Pierre Sauvage and Bernard Peringa for their efforts to design and build tiny molecular motors and devices.
The whole field of molecular-sized devices began with Richard Feynman, a brilliant American quantum physicist, himself a Nobel Prize winner.
He was famous for his galvanizing series of lectures in the field (they can be seen on YouTube), his eccentricity and his extraordinary talent for inspiring physicists, other scientists and the public.
The Nobel committee caught the flavour of the man in their background information for the 2016 Nobel Prize in chemistry, by recalling Feynman’s 1984 lecture in which he challenged scientists to imagine and create tiny molecular tools.
Recalling that lecture, the Nobel committee described what happened: “Feynman stood at the podium, barefoot, wearing a pink polo top and beige shorts, and turned to his audience and said, ‘Now let’s talk about the possibility of making machines with moveable parts, which are very tiny.'”
He was convinced it was possible to build machines on the nanometer scale one example of which from nature was the corkscrew shape of macromolecules of flagella, which when they spin, move bacteria forward.
The aims of Feynman were twofold: Inspire scientists to take on the challenge of building tiny molecular machines and provide a few hints about how they might go about it.
The Nobel committee went on to add, “and when he folded up his notes at the lecture’s end, he looked out at the audience and said mischievously, ‘Have a delightful time in designing all kinds of machinery to see if you can do it. And give it 25 to 30 years, there will be some practical use for it. What it is, I do not know.'”
Feynman’s timing was prophetic because 25 to 30 years later, a Nobel Prize was shared by Sauvage, Stoddart and Feringa in 2016 for showing how molecular machines could be built step by step.
Step one was taken by Sauvage in 1983. Normally, molecules are joined by strong covalent bonds in which atoms share electrons, Sauvage managed to link ring molecules in a chain, likened by some to the linked circles in the Olympic symbol.
He showed that molecules could be linked physically, which allowed movement between the molecules in the chain without the rigid constraints chemical bonds would impose between successive molecules in the chain.
Step two was taken by Stoddart who, in 1991, managed to thread a molecular ring onto a molecular axle physically without resorting to chemical bonds.
This molecular model allowed for movement back and forth in the axis of the axle, and was the starting point for molecular lift, or perhaps molecular muscle contraction and relaxation or a molecule-based computer chip, far smaller and faster than ordinary computer chips.
Step three came in 1999 with Feringa, who was the first to develop a rotor blade, which given an energy source, could spin continually in the same direction.
With this tool he was able to rotate a glass cylinder 10,000 times larger than the motor and to top it off, later designed a nano car. That was impressive, not so much for its practical use then, but for the future of more practical molecular tools.
More recently, a four-wheel-drive molecular vehicle was developed. Some visionaries imagine that tiny devices might be adopted for treating cancer and vascular disease.
That’s the view the Nobel committee took in awarding the prize in 2016 — the award was made based on hope and the promise of what molecular tools might offer in the future.
That’s forward thinking, very much in line with Feynman’s vision for what was possible in 1984.
Last year, the chemistry prize was awarded to Demis Hassabis, John Jumper and David Baker. The efforts of Hassabis, Jumper and Google concentrated on deciphering the 3D shapes of proteins from the order of amino acids in proteins.
Baker’s interest focused on designing and building novel proteins to serve as tiny molecular-sized motors, novel sensing proteins and mimicking viruses for vaccines.
What began with an obituary became a reminder to me of how the best of science sometimes works, beginning in this case with the prophetic insight and inspiration provided by Feynman and later the hard work of Sauvage, Stoddart, Feringa, Baker and many others.
Readers might be interested in Feynman’s lectures: They remain immensely popular and are available on YouTube.
So also, is last year’s lecture on the Nobel chemistry Prize, which is available on the Niagara-on-the-Lake website. Just look for the YouTube symbol at the bottom of the web page for all Noble talks and other series which you might be interested in such as “Aging,” “Artificial Intelligence” or even “Mindfulness and Meditation.”
If you go to the Nobel.org website, you can find out about all the Nobel Prizes, including in science summaries of the work, the work in the laureate’s own words and in some cases, amazing biographical information about the laureates.
Dr. William Brown is a professor of neurology at McMaster University and co-founder of the InfoHealth series at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library.
