Scientists Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a new form of molecular architecture, producing materials that can help address challenges such as climate change and lack of fresh water.
The three laureates worked to create molecular constructs with large spaces through which gases and other chemicals can flow and which could be used to harvest water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide or store toxic gases.
The academy said some of these materials had a remarkably large surface area – a material roughly as porous as a small sugar cube could contain as much surface area as a large football field.
“A small amount of this material can be almost like Hermione’s bag in Harry Potter. It can store large amounts of gas in a tiny volume,” said Olof Ramstrom, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.
A small amount of this material can be almost like Hermione’s bag in Harry Potter. It can store large amounts of gas in a tiny volume.– Olof Ramstrom, member of the Nobel committee
Its advances grew over several years, the committee said, starting with Robson in 1989 and including contributions from Kitagawa and Yaghi between 1992 and 2003.
Kitagawa, 74, is a professor at Kyoto University, Japan. He said at the Nobel press conference that he was deeply honored by the prize.
“My dream is to capture air and separate it into – for example, into CO2 [carbon dioxide] or oxygen or water or something like that – and convert them into useful materials using renewable energy,” he said.
One promising field is carbon capture in cement production, one of the dirtiest industrial processes and responsible for seven percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are already being used in some cement plants to capture it before it is released into the atmosphere.
Following the discoveries, chemists built tens of thousands of different MOFs, some of which “could contribute to solving some of humanity’s greatest challenges,” the academy said, adding that additional uses included separating toxic PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” from water and breaking down trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in the environment.
Science is ‘the greatest equalizing force’, says winner
Yaghi, 60, was born to Palestinian refugees in Jordan, where his family shared a one-room house with the cattle the family raised.
“It’s quite a journey and science allows you to do it,” he said in an interview published on the Nobel website, adding that his parents barely knew how to read or write. “Science is the greatest equalizing force in the world,” he said.
Yaghi, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley, said he was surprised and delighted to win the award. He was 10 years old when he found a book about molecules in the library and said it was the beginning of a lifelong love of chemistry.
Robson, now 88, was born in Britain but moved to Australia in his early 20s. A professor at the University of Melbourne, he said he received the call from Stockholm, at his home in the state of Victoria, half an hour before the official announcement.
“I prepared fish for dinner with my wife and then washed the dishes,” he told Reuters.
Although he recently gave up alcohol for health reasons, Robson said he “broke that rule by having a glass of very cheap wine.”
The Nobel Prizes, which are also awarded for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, literature and peace, come with a prize value of 11 million Swedish kronor (1.6 million Canadian dollars).
The literature prize will be awarded on Thursday and the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday. The economics award will be announced on October 13th.
The Nobel Prizes are awarded to the laureates in a ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.
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