Sir James Fraser Stoddart is a British-American chemist who is Chair Professor in Chemistry at the University of Hong Kong. He has also been Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry and head of the Stoddart Mechanostereochemistry Group in the Department of Chemistry at Northwestern University in the United States. He works in the area of supramolecular chemistry and nanotechnology. Stoddart has developed highly efficient syntheses of mechanically-interlocked molecular architectures such as molecular Borromean rings, catenanes and rotaxanes utilising molecular recognition and molecular self-assembly processes. He has demonstrated that these topologies can be employed as molecular switches. His group has even applied these structures in the fabrication of nanoelectronic devices and nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS). His efforts have been recognized by numerous awards, including the 2007 King Faisal International Prize in Science. He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Ben Feringa and Jean-Pierre Sauvage in 2016 for the design and synthesis of molecular machines.
Stuart Schreiber is an American chemist who is the Morris Loeb Research Professor at Harvard University, a co-founder of the Broad Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Emeritus, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine. He currently leads Arena BioWorks.
Sir Martyn Poliakoff is a British chemist known for his work on green chemistry and for being the main presenter on the popular YouTube channel Periodic Videos. The core subjects of his academic work are supercritical fluids, infrared spectroscopy and lasers. He is a research professor in chemistry at the University of Nottingham. As well as carrying out research at the University of Nottingham, he is a lecturer, teaching a number of modules including green chemistry.
Sir David William Cross MacMillan is a Scottish chemist and the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University, where he was also the chair of the Department of Chemistry from 2010 to 2015. He shared the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Benjamin List "for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis". MacMillan used his share of the $1.14 million prize to establish the May and Billy MacMillan Foundation.
David Alan Leigh FRS FRSE FRSC is a British chemist, Royal Society Research Professor and, since 2014, the Sir Samuel Hall Chair of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Manchester. He was previously the Forbes Chair of Organic Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh (2001–2012) and Professor of Synthetic Chemistry at the University of Warwick (1998–2001).
Laurence David Barron has been Gardiner Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow since 1998. He is a chemist who has conducted pioneering research into the properties of chiral molecules — defined by Lord Kelvin as those that cannot be superimposed onto their mirror image. By extending this definition of chirality to include moving particles and processes that vary with time, he has made a fundamental theoretical contribution to the field. Chiral molecules such as amino acids, sugars, proteins, and nucleic acids play a central role in the chemistry of life, and many drug molecules are chiral. Laurence's work on Raman optical activity — a spectroscopic technique capable of determining the three-dimensional structures of chiral molecules, which he predicted, observed, and applied to problems at the forefront of chemistry and structural biology — has led to its development as a powerful analytical tool used in academic and industrial laboratories worldwide. His much-cited book, Molecular Light Scattering and Optical Activity, has contributed to the growing impact of chirality on many areas of modern science.
Jason Meredith Reese (24 June 1967 – 8 March 2019 was a British engineering scientist, and Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh.
Polly Louise Arnold is a British chemist who is director of the chemical sciences division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. She previously held the Crum Brown chair in the School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh from 2007 to 2019 and an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) career fellowship.
James Henderson Naismith is a Scot, Professor of Structural Biology and since autumn of 2023 the Head of the Mathematical, Physical, and Life Science Division (MPLS) Division at the University of Oxford. He was the inaugural Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute and Director of the Research Complex at Harwell. He previously served as Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of St Andrews. He was a member of Council of the Royal Society (2021-2022). He is also currently the Vice-Chair of Council of the European X-ray Free Electron Laser and Vice-President (non-clinical) of The Academy of Medical Sciences.
Marvin H. Caruthers is an American biochemist who is a distinguished professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Christopher "Kit" Colin Cummins is an American chemist, currently the Henry Dreyfus Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has made contributions to the coordination chemistry of transition metal nitrides, phosphides, and carbides.
Claire Sandrine Jacqueline Adjiman is a professor of Chemical Engineering at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Fiona C. Meldrum is a British scientist who is a Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Leeds where she works on bio-inspired materials and crystallisation processes. She won the 2017 Royal Society of Chemistry Interdisciplinary Prize.
Helen H. Fielding is a Professor of physical chemistry at University College London (UCL). She focuses on ultrafast transient spectroscopy of protein chromophores and molecules. She was the first woman to win the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize (1996) and Marlow Award (2001).
Elena Besley is a British scientist who is Professor of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry at the University of Nottingham. She holds a Royal Society Wolfson Fellowship and is Associate Editor of Nano Letters.
Matthew John Fuchter is a British chemist who is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the development and application of novel functional molecular systems to a broad range of areas; from materials to medicine. He has been awarded both the Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize (2014) and the Corday–Morgan Prizes (2021) of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2020 he was a finalist for the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists.
Assembly theory is a framework developed to quantify the complexity of molecules and objects by assessing the minimal number of steps required to assemble them from fundamental building blocks. Proposed by chemist Lee Cronin and his team, the theory assigns an assembly index to molecules, which serves as a measurable indicator of their structural complexity. Cronin and colleagues argue that this approach allows for experimental verification and has applications in understanding selection processes, evolution, and the identification of biosignatures in astrobiology. However, the usefulness of the approach has been disputed.
Benjamin List is a German chemist who is one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research and professor of organic chemistry at the University of Cologne. He co-developed organocatalysis, a method of accelerating chemical reactions and making them more efficient. He shared the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with David MacMillan "for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis".
Andrei Nikolaevich Khlobystov is a Russian-British scientist who is the Professor of Nanomaterials at the University of Nottingham. He serves as Director for Research for the School of Chemistry in the Faculty of Science and has received several awards during his career, including the European Young Investigator award and the Corday–Morgan Prize in 2015. Khlobystov is currently the Director and principal investigator of the Metal Atoms on Surfaces and Interfaces EPSRC Programme Grant.
Simon Aldridge FRS is a British chemist specialising in inorganic chemistry, with a particular focus on the chemistry of main group elements. He is currently a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and a Fellow and Tutor in Inorganic Chemistry at The Queen’s College, Oxford. His research has significantly contributed to the field of main group chemistry. Aldridge has been recognised with several awards, including a Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2024.
