Sir Fraser Stoddart was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2016 for the design and synthesis of molecular machines. Sir Fraser is one of the few chemists during the past 35 years to have created a new field of chemistry, namely, one in which the mechanical bond is a pre-eminent feature of molecular compounds. He pioneered the development of the use of molecular recognition in template-directed protocols for the synthesis of two-state mechanically interlocked molecules, which have been employed as molecular switches in the fabrication of molecular electronic devices and in the design and synthesis of artificial molecular machines.