University of Melbourne professor wins Nobel Prize

Stockholm: Scientists Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi won the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for their work in the development of metal–organic frameworks that dates back to 1989.

The Nobel committee said that the three laureates “have developed a new form of molecular architecture.”

Professor Richard Robson is a Nobel Prize winner.Credit: University of Melbourne

“They have created molecular constructions with large spaces through which gases and other chemicals can flow,” the committee said.

Hans Ellegren, secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, announced the chemistry prize in Stockholm. It was the third prize announced this week.

Robson, 88, is affiliated with the University of Melbourne, Kitagawa, 74, with Japan’s Kyoto University and Yaghi, 60, with the University of California, Berkeley.

“These constructions, metal-organic frameworks, can be used to harvest water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide, store toxic gases or catalyse chemical reactions,” the Nobel Committee said in a statement.

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The chemists, working separately but adding to each other’s breakthroughs with research that dates back to 1989, devised ways to make stable metal organic frameworks — which may be compared to the timber framework of a house.

These structures can absorb and contain gases inside these frameworks, with many practical applications today — such as capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or sucking water out of dry desert air.

“Metal-organic frameworks have enormous potential, bringing previously unforeseen opportunities for custom-made materials with new functions,” Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said in a news release.

Olof Ramström, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, described the trio’s discovery as similar to Hermione Granger’s enchanted handbag in the fictional Harry Potter series: small on the outside but very large on the inside.

Kitagawa spoke to the committee and the press over the phone on Wednesday after his win was announced.

“I’m deeply honored and delighted that my long-standing research has been recognized,” he said.

There have been 116 chemistry prizes given to 195 individuals between 1901 and 2024.

The 2024 prize was awarded to David Baker, a biochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, computer scientists at Google DeepMind, a British-American artificial intelligence research laboratory based in London.

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The three were awarded for discovering powerful techniques to decode and even design novel proteins, the building blocks of life. Their work used advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, and holds the potential to transform how new drugs and other materials are made.

The first Nobel Prize of 2025 was announced on Monday. The prize in medicine went to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.

Tuesday’s physics prize went to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis for their research on the weird world of subatomic quantum tunneling that advances the power of everyday digital communications and computing.

This year’s Nobel announcements continue with the literature prize Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics prize next Monday.

The award ceremony will be held on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, who founded the prizes. Nobel was a wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite. He died in 1896.

AP

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