Scientists Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the development of metal-organic frameworks,” the award-giving body said from Stockholm on Wednesday.
The new Nobel laureates “have created molecular constructions with large spaces through which gases and other chemicals can flow,” the Royal Academy of Science said.
“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 committee added in a statement.
The developments grew over a period of several years, the commitee said, beginning with Robson in 1989 and including the contributions of Kitagawa and Yaghi between 1992 and 2003.
Kitagawa, 74, is a professor at Kyoto University in Japan, the 88-year-old Robson a professor at the University of Melbourne and the 60-year-old Yaghi, born in Jordan, is a professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
The Nobel awards, which are also handed out for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, literature and peace, come with a prize amount of 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.6 million Cdn).
The prize for literature will be awarded on Thursday, and the Nobel Peace Prize is to be announced on Friday. The economics prize will be announced Oct. 13.
The Nobel Prizes are presented to the laureates in a ceremony on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel’s death.
