WASHINGTON, Oct. 8, 2025 — On behalf of the American Chemical Society (ACS), President Dorothy J. Phillips congratulates today’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University, Japan; Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne, Australia; and Omar M. Yaghi of the University of California, Berkeley, U.S. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the prize to Kitagawa, Robson and Yaghi equally “for the development of metal-organic frameworks.”
“This is tremendous science and I’m thrilled to see the development of metal-organic frameworks recognized with this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry,” says Phillips. “This award highlights chemistry's greatest strength: the ability to design and build molecular structures that address global challenges. It's also wonderful to see this international collaboration celebrated, with groundbreaking work from scientists across Japan, Australia, and the United States.”
Kitagawa has been an ACS member for 46 years and was honored by Northwestern University and ACS’ Chicago Local Section with the 2016 Basalo Award & Lecture “Discovery and Development of Functional Porous Coordination Polymers / Metal-Organic Frameworks.”
Robson published two papers in 1989 on the innovative metal-organic frameworks in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), titled “Synthesis and x-ray crystal structures of tetranickel and tetrazinc complexes of a macrocyclic tetranucleating ligand” and “Infinite polymeric frameworks consisting of three dimensionally linked rod-like segments.”
Yaghi is an executive editor of JACS and published a seminal paper in JACS in 1995 on the topic of the Nobel Prize, titled “Hydrothermal synthesis of a metal-organic framework containing large rectangular channels.” He received the 2009 ACS Award in the Chemistry of Materials and served as chair of the Central Arizona Local Section of ACS in 1996.
Kitagawa, Robson and Yaghi have published articles on the development of metal-organic frameworks in some of ACS’ more than 90 peer-reviewed journals and in Chemical & Engineering News, ACS’ weekly news magazine. Articles are available upon request.
News media can arrange interviews with Phillips or other experts in the field by contacting the ACS newsroom. In addition, ACS will post a special Headline Science short video about the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
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The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1876 and chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS is committed to improving all lives through the transforming power of chemistry. Its mission is to advance scientific knowledge, empower a global community and champion scientific integrity, and its vision is a world built on science. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, e-books and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
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