An Australian scientist is one of three people who have been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the development of metal-organic frameworks”.
Scientists Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi laid the groundwork to potentially suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere or harvest moisture from desert environments.
Metal-organic frameworks are molecular constructions with large spaces through which gases and other chemicals can flow.
“Through the development of metal-organic frameworks, the laureates have provided chemists with new opportunities for solving some of the challenges we face,” the award-giving body said in a statement.
Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi have been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. (Reuters: TT News Agency/Fredrik Sandberg )
Professor Robson, a lecturer and researcher at the University of Melbourne, told the Associated Press that he was “very pleased” and “a bit stunned” to receive the award.
“This is a major thing that happens late in life when I’m not really in a condition to withstand it all,” the 88-year-old said over the phone from his home in Melbourne.
“But here we are.”
The Chemistry Nobel was the third prize announced in this year’s crop of awards, in keeping with tradition, following those for medicine and physics announced earlier this week.
The more than a century-old prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the recipients share 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.7 million), as well as the fame of claiming arguably the world’s most prestigious science award.
Established in the will of Swedish inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel, the prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace have been awarded since 1901, with a few interruptions mostly due to the world wars.
Nobel was himself a chemist and his developments in that field helped underpin the wealth he amassed from his invention of dynamite in the 19th century.
The economics prize is a later addition funded by the Swedish central bank.
Sometimes overshadowed by more famous laureates in the fields of physics, literature and peace, the chemistry awards have still recognised many influential discoveries such as nuclear fission, DNA sequencing techniques, and yeast.
Alfred Nobel was himself a chemist. (Reuters: Tom Little)
Last year’s chemistry award went to US scientists David Baker and John Jumper and Briton Demis Hassabis for work on decoding the structure of proteins and creating new ones, yielding advances in areas such as drug development.
The first Nobel of 2025 was announced 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 tunnelling that advances the power of everyday digital communications and computing.
This year’s Nobel announcements continue with the literature prize on Thursday.
The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics prize next Monday.
Reuters/AP