Overview

• Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi won the 2025 prize and will share 11 million Swedish kronor, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced in Stockholm.
• The committee traced the breakthrough from Robson’s 1989 framework concept to Kitagawa’s early 1990s demonstrations of gas adsorption and flexibility and Yaghi’s highly stable, designable MOF-5.
• Officials described the materials as like “rooms in a hotel” or Hermione Granger’s handbag, storing large amounts of gas in a tiny volume.
• Researchers have since created tens of thousands of these materials, with applications reported in water harvesting, carbon capture, PFAS and pharmaceutical removal, hydrogen storage and catalysis.
• The laureates are based at Kyoto University, the University of Melbourne and the University of California, Berkeley, and the Nobel ceremony is scheduled for December 10.