By Kostya Manenkov and Stefanie Dazio, Associated Press
Stockholm (AP) – Scientists Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry on Wednesday for their development of metal-organic frameworks that could play a role in solving some of humanity’s greatest challenges. One expert compared the discovery to Hermione Granger’s enchanted handbag in the Fictional “Harry Potter” series.
From capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or sucking water from dry desert air, the trio’s new form of molecular architecture can absorb and contain gases in stable metallic organic frameworks.
The frameworks can be compared to the wooden framework of a house and Hermione’s famous beaded handbag, in that they are small on the outside but very large on the inside, according to Olof Ramström, a member of the Nobel Committee on Chemistry.
The chemists worked separately but added to each other’s breakthroughs, which began with Robson in 1989.
“Metal-organic frameworks have enormous potential and offer previously unforeseen possibilities for tailor-made materials with new functions,” Heiner Linke, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said in a press release.
The committee mentioned the potential to use the frameworks to so-called divorce “Forever Chemicals” of water.
Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a group of chemicals that have been around for decades and have now spread into the air, water and soil. They are also called “forever chemicals.”
Hans Ellegren, Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, announced Wednesday’s prize in Stockholm. It was the third award announced this week.
Robson, 88, is affiliated with the University of Melbourne in Australia. Kitagawa, 74, is at Japan’s Kyoto University and Yaghi, 60, with the University of California, Berkeley.
Kitagawa spoke to the committee and the press Wednesday by telephone after his victory was announced.
“I am deeply honored and pleased that my long-term research has been recognized,” he said.
The 88-year-old Robson, in a phone call to the Associated Press, said he was “very happy of course and also a little bit stunned.”
“This is an important thing that happens late in life when I’m not really in a condition to withstand anything,” he said. “But here we are.”
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.
The three were awarded Discover powerful techniques to decode and even design new proteins, the building blocks of life. Their work used advanced technologies, including artificial intelligenceand holds the potential to transform how new drugs and other materials are made.
The first Nobel of 2025 was announced on Monday. The price in medicine went to Mary E. BrunkowFred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi for them Discoveries regarding peripheral immune tolerance.
Tuesday’s physics prize Went to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis for their research into the strange world of subatomic quantum tunneling This promotes the power of daily digital communication and computer use.
This year’s Nobel announcements continue on Thursday with the literature prize. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced next Monday Friday and the Economics Prize.
The awards ceremony will be held on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death, who set the prices. Nobel was a wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite. He died in 1896.
Dazio reported from Berlin. Christina Larson in Washington and Rod McGuirk in Melbourne, Australia.
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