An Australian chemist just won the Nobel Prize. Here’s how his work is changing the world

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for the development of metal-organic structures: molecular structures with large spaces within them, capable of capturing and storing gases and other chemicals.

The prize is shared by Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University, Omar M. Yaghi of the University of California at Berkeley and an Australian professor, Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne.

Robson first discovered metal-organic structures, known as MOFs, in 1989, with his close collaborator Bernard Hoskins.

At a time when the value of research is being questioned, Robson’s story is a powerful reminder of how scientific research leads to real-world impact after years of sustained effort and support.

A personal connection

Like many other Australian scientists, I was inspired by Professor Richard Robson to continue my research into MOFs. He is still working in the lab at nearly 90 years old, mentoring students, teaching, and collaborating with many of us. This recognition honors Richard’s decades of dedication as a researcher and educator in coordination and inorganic chemistry.

I had the great fortune to be among his many collaborators and he left an indelible mark. With Richard and his close colleague, Richard Abrahams, a professor at the University of Melbourne, we explored how electrons move inside MOFs.

As young chemists, we first learned about Richard’s discovery during undergraduate classes. It’s an inspiring story about the deep connection between teaching and research in our universities.

Although the work that led to these materials is basic science, Richard’s accomplishments show that in-depth, curiosity-driven research has critically important real-world impacts.

What began as a scientific curiosity for Richard as he prepared chemical models to demonstrate to his undergraduate chemistry students, blossomed into a transformative innovation. MOFs are now helping to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges, from greenhouse gas capture to drug delivery and medical imaging.

So, what are MOFs?

Metal-organic structures are incredibly porous crystalline materials made of metal ions, linked by organic bridges.

Think of a sponge with holes on the atomic scale. A teaspoon of one of these materials can have the surface area of ​​a football field.

The shapes, sizes and functionality of these tiny pores can be changed, much like an architect designs a building where the parts each have different functions and can accomplish different tasks.

There are tens of thousands of MOFs today. Some are used to capture water from the desert air. Others were designed to remove greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Still others can clean Earth’s waterways by capturing and removing potentially harmful chemicals.

The long road to concrete applications

Although some companies are now scaling MOFs to help solve major global problems, Richard began this work decades ago.

In 2018, during a plenary lecture at the 6th World MOF Conference in Auckland, New Zealand, he described how he was preparing molecular models for a conference when the idea came to him.

Richard reasoned that metal ions such as copper could be connected in a systematic and controlled way to other atoms such as carbon and nitrogen using coordination chemistry. It’s essentially like molecular Lego, where one piece can only fit together in a particular way.

With his colleague Bernard Hoskins, they recognized that the geometric structure was orderly and contained innumerable cavities. Over the next decade, Nobel Prize winners Kitagawa and Yaghi made subsequent discoveries that showed how these materials could be made stable and engineered in a controlled manner.

Among the tens of thousands of MOFs currently known, a number are on the verge of commercial use. For example, Richard’s work with Brendan Abrahams has shown that these materials can remove excess anesthetic greenhouse gases from operating rooms. These greenhouse gases are tens of thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

MOFs are also used to extract water from the air, which is particularly important in dry, arid environments where water is scarce.

At a time when Australia is debating the contribution of research, the value of higher education and universities and how to increase productivity, Richard’s legacy highlights the profound value of education and research, and how they are deeply interconnected.

But to truly thrive, they need sustained support over many years, well beyond the short-term horizon of political cycles.

Basic science, often driven by curiosity and without immediate application, lays the foundation for breakthroughs that can help solve the pressing challenges we face today and those to come.

Richard Robson now joins 11 other Australian scientists whose work has been recognized with a Nobel Prize. All Australians can be very proud of Richard’s achievements on the world stage.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.