Sir Fraser received his BSc (1964) and PhD (1966) degrees from Edinburgh University. In 1967, he went to Queen’s University (Canada) as a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow, and then, in 1970, to Sheffield University as an Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) Research Fellow, before joining the academic staff as a Lecturer in Chemistry in the same year, and he was promoted to be professor later on. He was the Saul Winstein Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1997 to 2002. Sir Fraser has pioneered the development of the use of molecular recognition and self-assembly processes in template-directed protocols for the synthesis of two-state mechanically interlocked molecules including bistable catenanes and rotaxanes.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, the German Academy ( Leopoldina ) of Natural Sciences, and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Society of Chemistry. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2007. His many awards include the King Faisal International Prize in Science, the Albert Einstein World Prize in Nanotechnology, the Feynman Prize in Science, the Arthur C Cope Award from the American Chemical Society, and the Royal Medal of the Royal Society of Edinburgh presented to him by the Duke of Edinburgh.  He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2016 for the design and synthesis of molecular machines.