Scientists Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi have won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the development of metal-organic frameworks”, the award-giving body has announced.
Metal-organic frameworks are molecular constructions with large spaces through which gases and other chemicals can flow.
The academy says the work dating back to 1989 can be used to help harvest water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide and store toxic gases.
“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 won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. (Reuters: TT News Agency/Fredrik Sandberg )
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 winners share 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.7 million), as well as the fame of winning 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