UCLA chemistry professor and nanotech expert Fraser Stoddart has been awarded knighthood by queen elizabeth II of Britain. Stoddart, a British subject, moved to UCLA in 1997 and is now the director of the California NanoSystems Institute.

He said knighthood would allow him "to be more influential, perhaps, in speaking on behalf of the importance of chemistry to science and the importance of nanotechnology."

A spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. said it was rare for an academic working outside Britain to be knighted.