Photo credit: Karen Zhou — Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Richard Robson
born 1937 · United Kingdom, Australia · 20th century
Nobel Chemistry 2025
In 1989 combined copper ions with a four-armed molecule to make the first porous crystal of the kind later called a metal–organic framework.
Nobel Prize work
In 1989 Robson reported crystals built from copper(I) ions and a tetrahedral four-armed nitrile molecule — the first scaffold of the type now called a metal–organic framework. Its diamond-like network enclosed solvent-filled cavities, and Robson suggested such designed frameworks could act as hosts for new chemistry, the idea that grew into the MOF field.