Molecular discovery that won Nobel Prize in chemistry is likened to 'Harry Potter' enchanted handbag
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3:30 AM on Wednesday, October 8
By KOSTYA MANENKOV, STEFANIE DAZIO and CHRISTINA LARSON
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for their development of metal–organic frameworks that could eventually help reduce pollution and combat climate change. A member of the Nobel committee likened the discovery to Hermione Granger’s seemingly bottomless enchanted handbag in the fictional “Harry Potter” series, in that the frameworks may look small from the outside, but are able to hold surprisingly vast quantities within them.
The Nobel Committee said Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi were being awarded for “groundbreaking discoveries," saying “some of these may contribute to solving some of humankind’s greatest challenges.”
From capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or sucking water out of dry desert air, the trio's new form of molecular architecture can absorb and contain gases inside stable metal organic frameworks.
The frameworks can be compared to the timber framework of a house, and Hermione’s famous beaded handbag, in that they are small on the outside but very large on the inside, according to Olof Ramström, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.
Robson, 88, is affiliated with the University of Melbourne in Australia. Kitagawa, 74, is with Japan’s Kyoto University and Yaghi, 60, with the University of California, Berkeley.
When his phone rang on Wednesday, Kitagawa said he answered “rather bluntly, thinking it must be yet one of those telemarketing calls I’m getting a lot recently.”
“It was such a big prize so I thought, ‘is it really true?’" he recalled during a news conference at Kyoto University. "When one of the experts came on the phone and congratulated me, I finally thought it was real and felt relaxed.”
Kitagawa said the research has been widely recognized in the world of chemistry, but “it is very difficult to gain understanding by the ordinary people, and I’m delighted to be recognized.”
The 88-year-old Robson, in a phone call with The Associated Press from his home in Melbourne, Australia, said he was "very pleased of course and a bit stunned as well.”
“This is a major thing that happens late in life when I’m not really in a condition to withstand it all," he said. "But here we are.”
The chemists worked separately but added to each other’s breakthroughs, which began in 1989 with Robson.
“Metal-organic frameworks have enormous potential, bringing previously unforeseen opportunities for custom-made materials with new functions,” Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said in a news release.
The committee cited the potential for using the frameworks to separating so-called “forever chemicals” from water.
Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a group of chemicals that have been around for decades and have now spread into the air, water and soil. They are also referred to as “forever chemicals.”
The 2024 chemistry prize was awarded to David Baker, a biochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, computer scientists at Google DeepMind, a British-American artificial intelligence research laboratory based in London.
The three were awarded for discovering powerful techniques to decode and even design novel proteins, the building blocks of life. Their work used advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, and holds the potential to transform how new drugs and other materials are made.
The first Nobel of 2025 was announced Monday. The prize in medicine went to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.
Tuesday's physics prize went to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis for their research on the weird world of subatomic quantum tunneling that advances the power of everyday digital communications and computing.
This year's Nobel announcements continue with the literature prize Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics prize next Monday.
The award ceremony will be held Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, who founded the prizes. Nobel was a wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite. He died in 1896.
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Dazio reported from Berlin and Larson from Washington. Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Rod McGuirk in Melbourne, Australia.
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AP Nobel Prizes: https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes
