Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of metal-organic frameworks.
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi “for the development of metal-organic frameworks”. The awarded scientists were able to create molecular constructions with large spaces running through them, in which gases and other chemicals are free to flow. These constructions, metal-organic structures, can be used to collect water from the air in the desert, capture carbon dioxide, store toxic gases or promote chemical reactions.
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Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2025: who are the awarded scientists
Susumu Kitagawa, born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1951, is a Professor at Kyoto University. Richard Robson, born 1937 in Glusburn, United Kingdom, teaches at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Omar M. Yaghi, born in 1965 in Amman, Jordan, is a Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, United States.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry: historical curiosities
The Nobel Prize for Chemistry, established by Alfred Nobel’s will in 1895, is awarded like that for Physics by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Since 1901, 116 have been awarded to 197 people (actually, 195: Frederick Sanger and Barry Sharpless were awarded twice). Of the prizes awarded, 63 went to a single scientist, 25 were shared between two scientists, and 28 between three.
The youngest and oldest Nobel Prize winners in chemistry were Frédéric Joliot, who was 35 years old when he was awarded in 1935 together with Irène Joliot-Curie, daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie, “in recognition of their synthesis of new radioactive elements”; and John B. Goodenough, a 97-year-old honoree in 2019 along with Michael Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino “for the development of lithium-ion batteries.”
In all these years, only 8 women have won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Among these, two – Marie Curie and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin – enjoyed recognition alone, not shared with other (male) scientists. The first was rewarded in 1911 for the discovery of radium and polonium; the second in 1964, “for his determination, through the use of X-ray techniques, of the structures of important biochemical substances”.
In 2024, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded half to David Baker “for the computational design of proteins” and the other half, jointly to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper “for the prediction of the structure of proteins”.
