The most powerful worker in history: The odd jobs assigned by the boss were turned into a Nobel Prize by him.

Every year when the Nobel Prizes are announced, onlookers always ask two important questions — What is this research about? Who are these people?

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for a very orthodox chemical research. Three scientists, Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar M. Yaghi, created “metal-organic frameworks”. It is a structure with large internal cavities through which molecules can freely pass in and out.

Susumu Kitagawa

As a chemist, you can tell real wine from fake wine!

Kitagawa works at Kyoto University. The university's website has some interesting introductions about researchers. Besides their research fields and achievements, it also mentions their personal hobbies.

So we know that the seemingly serious Deputy Dean Kitagawa is actually a fan of detective novels and thrillers in private, and he is also very fond of kabuki performances.

When asked why he devoted himself to the field of chemistry, Kitagawa's answer was “Because chemists can distinguish between methanol and ethanol” — Well, is he afraid of drinking fake wine?

Kitagawa tasting ethanol extracted from fermented grapes at a winery | icems.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Maybe he really is. In an interview, Kitagawa also said that he loves drinking very much. On non - busy evenings, he would invite people in his research group to drink together. While drinking, he would call on people to stand up and say a few words, saying that it was to train students' public speaking skills. “Some people could only speak for 20 seconds when they first joined the group, but after a year, they can speak for at least 20 minutes.”

The whole research group stands up and says thank you to ethanol!

Kitagawa celebrating his 60th birthday with his students. I wonder if they drank or not | icems.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Was Zhuangzi the guide to metal-organic frameworks?

Of course, distinguishing between methanol and ethanol can be done by anyone who has studied junior high school chemistry. The shift from learning to tell fake wine to researching metal-organic frameworks might have been inspired by Zhuangzi thousands of years ago.

As a student, Kitagawa read the books of Hideki Yukawa, the first Japanese Nobel laureate and physicist. What attracted Kitagawa was not elementary particles, but the idea of Zhuangzi, “the usefulness of the useless”, mentioned in the book.

Kitagawa said that at that time, chemists focused on “useful things”, while Zhuangzi's thought inspired him to pay attention to “useless things”. These “useless things” are the tiny pores in popular organic materials.

Kitagawa gradually shifted his focus to the uncharted area of organic material research. At the age of 47, having become a teacher, he finally published his first paper on metal-organic frameworks. However, there were so few people interested in this field that he couldn't even find a few people to celebrate with over a drink. At the age of 51, he first introduced metal-organic frameworks in “Science”, which then attracted attention. At the age of 74, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on metal-organic frameworks.

After struggling in the uncharted area for most of his life and finally achieving success, the old gentleman didn't think about taking a rest. When participating in the press conference by phone after winning the award, Kitagawa said, “I'm really honored and happy to win the award... But how long do I have to stay here? I have to go to a meeting right away.”

Sure enough, for a person to succeed, ability, perseverance, and the vision to choose the right path are all indispensable.

When each student becomes a professor, Kitagawa will give them a ceramic owl ornament, encouraging them to twist their necks like an owl and view problems from more perspectives | icems.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Richard Robson

A straight - A student from top - tier schools all the way

Although he spent most of his life at the University of Melbourne in Australia, Richard Robson is actually British.

He was born in a small village in Yorkshire with a population of about 3,000.

Then he went to the University of Oxford for his undergraduate and doctoral degrees, and did postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University.

He is truly a high - achieving student from a small village.

After completing two rounds of postdoctoral research at the age of 29, he took a cargo ship to the University of Melbourne and started as a lecturer. Then he stayed there for the next 59 years without moving.

He is a scientist who really doesn't like moving.

Richard Robson | Image source: pursuit.unimelb.edu.au

He can handle the odd jobs assigned by his superiors so well!

Inspired by small balls and sticks, Richard Robson founded a new field in chemistry. Image source: Paul Burston/University of Melbourne

Actually, Richard Robson didn't want to work on wooden balls and sticks at first. It was a task assigned by his superior — to make large wooden crystal structure models for first - year chemistry lectures. For this, he had to use trigonometric tables to calculate the angles for drilling holes in the wooden balls.

At that time, Richard Robson was a lecturer in the Department of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Melbourne, and the superior who assigned the task was the then department head, Don Stranks.

The then department head, Don Stranks, passed away in 1986. Image source: connect.adelaide.edu.au

It has to be said that among all the odd jobs assigned by the superior, this one definitely brought the greatest return.

He didn't name the new structure because he thought it was “unnecessary”

Actually, at first, neither Robson himself nor his closest collaborator, Bernard Hoskins, the co - author of the first paper, thought this new structure was very important.

The first paper in this field published by Robson. The other author, Bernard Hoskins, conducted crystallographic research (proving that the substance has the required structure). | pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja00160a038

At that time, the collaborator Bernard Hoskins had a reserved attitude. His feeling was — What a strange thing! I've never seen it before!

Standard crystals are very regular and dense, with little space between atoms. But this new material is different. The framework occupies less than half of the crystal volume, and its large internal channels are filled with highly disordered solvent molecules and freely movable ions. At that time, it was an extremely rare material — It is undoubtedly a crystal, but more than half of its volume is basically liquid.

On the left is the diamond structure. On the right is the copper I - tetracyanide framework, which has the same structure but with a lot of space introduced inside the framework.

Robson himself didn't give their new structure an official name. He thought it was unnecessary because these structures were just an application in the century - old field of coordination chemistry.

So, the task of naming fell to another scientist, Yaghi. He named it “metal - organic frameworks”, abbreviated as MOF, and named this research field “reticular chemistry”.

They clapped for me!

It wasn't until 2018 that Professor Robson was first invited to participate in the International Conference on Metal - Organic Frameworks, and by then the conference had already reached its sixth edition.

Professor Robson modestly said that he thought he did “not bad” at that conference.

“They clapped for me,” he said.

Omar M. Yaghi

An 11 - member family living with cows

In 1965, Yaghi was born in Jordan. His family was a refugee family that was forced to move from Palestine to Jordan. When notifying Yaghi of his Nobel Prize, the organizers also mentioned that he was probably the first Nobel laureate born in Jordan.

His family lived in the desert under very poor conditions. There were nine children in the family, and they crowded into a room with their parents — to be precise, half a room, because the other half was used to raise cows.

They had no electricity and very little clean water. They could get water for four hours every two weeks. If they didn't store enough water for two weeks, they had to find other ways.

This also made Yaghi have a deeper understanding of the preciousness of water resources. Later, a type of MOF material he studied can capture water vapor from the air, which can be used to help arid areas obtain clean water resources. In a way, he is also helping himself as a child.

Yaghi's research can capture water from the air | David Huff / Atoco

However, Yaghi admitted that when he first started his research, he didn't aim to solve such grand problems as water resources or carbon capture. He was just fascinated by the beauty of chemistry.

At the age of 10, he accidentally opened a book in the library and saw molecular diagrams. He was immediately fascinated — he couldn't even explain why. At that time, he didn't even know what these diagrams were, but he just thought they were very charming and interesting. Later, when he learned that these molecules actually make up all the substances around us and the whole world, he became even more fascinated.

As a child from a poor family, Yaghi's educational path was not easy. He had to help his father run the store after school. For him, going to school was like an escape from reality. He loved reading very much. In the only photo from his childhood, he was also holding a book. He said, “I didn't want to put down the book to take a photo.”

In the only group photo from his childhood, Yaghi, standing at the front, was still holding a book | Omar M. Yaghi

He couldn't speak English but went to study in the United States

At the age of 15, his father wanted Yaghi to study in the United States — he didn't want to go himself, but his father insisted.

At that time, he could hardly speak English. With the help of his brother, he first entered a community college in the United States. Fortunately, Yaghi studied very hard. He not only successfully obtained his university degree but also was determined to become a scientist. Although his parents actually hoped that he would become a doctor at first.

After obtaining his doctorate, Yaghi worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. Like many current doctoral graduates, he faced the choice between “industry and academia”.

This choice was not easy for him. The industry promised a much higher salary, and he also had to support his parents. But he still decided to follow his heart and stay in academia because he could do things that truly belonged to him here, pursue his own ideas, and conduct meaningful research.