Nobel laureate to attend Torkil Holm Symposium 2020

It is with great honour that the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences (ATV) presents Nobel Laureate Sir James Fraser Stoddart to attend the 2020 Torkil Holm Symposium in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Read more about the internationally recognized biennial Torkil Holm Symposium, “Visions in Chemistry” on the link to the right. 

Prof. Sir J. Fraser Stoddart was born in 1942 and was educated at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, where he received the Ph. D. degree in chemistry in 1966 for research in the field of carbohydrate chemistry.

During a postdoctoral stay in Canada, Stoddart was inspired by a 1967 publication on macrocyclic compounds known as “crown ethers” by Charles J. Pedersen (Nobel Prize, 1987) which led to the idea of merging carbohydrate chemistry and crown ether chemistry within the field of “molecular recognition” or “lock-and-key chemistry”.

He very successfully pursued this concept after returning to the UK in 1970 and it was during the late 1970s and early 1980s that Stoddart paved the way for his later role in the development (in academia in the UK and then in the USA and Australia) of mechanically interlocked molecules, that has led to the design and synthesis of molecular machines. The underlying concept is that the components of the smallest machines could be molecules which are able to move relative to each other in a controlled way upon application of some external stimulus such as an electric current.

Molecular machines have a myriad of potential uses as new materials, sensors, and energy storage systems, and it was for this work that Prof. Stoddart was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2016, having received a knighthood in 2007.

The Nobel Laureate will be joined by 10 of the world’s most influential and acknowledged chemists at the 2020 Torkil Holm Symposium.

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About Torkil Holm

Dr. Torkil Holm was born in 1924 and after working in industry in both the USA and Denmark he began his independent scientific career in 1962 at what is now the Department of Chemistry at DTU, where he was active in both research and teaching until his retirement in 1992.

As a distinguished emeritus member of the faculty, Dr. Holm’s passion for experimental organic chemistry meant that he continued research for more than 20 years after his official retirement, going into the laboratory nearly every day and performing experiments with his own hands.

Holm was the sole author on many of his papers, and he was still publishing in renowned international chemical journals at the age of 90.

Dr. Holm’s major field of research was the organometallic chemistry of the main group elements, particularly organomagnesium (Grignard) and organolithium species, but in later years he also focused on studies of physical organic chemistry and reaction mechanism.

Torkil Holm’s colourful personality and his generosity (both intellectually and financially) towards chemistry research at DTU have become legendary, and thanks to munificent support from the Torkil Holm Foundation the biennial “Visions in Chemistry” symposium series was established in 2012.

The Torkil Holm Symposium is one of the leading chemistry conferences in Europe, and has attracted many highly distinguished speakers, including several Nobel Laureates.