The Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar Yaghi for their work on metal-organic frameworks.
The announcement was made by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences at a news conference in Stockholm, Sweden.
The three winners will share the prize money of 11 million Swedish kronor (£872,000).
Last year, Demis Hassabis, John Jumper, and David Baker won the prize for their work on proteins, which are the building blocks of life.
The three scientists’ work is about how molecules can be built together into structures. The Nobel committee called it “molecular architecture“.
The men worked out how to build constructions with large spaces between the molecules, through which gases and other chemicals can flow.
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These are called “metal-organic frameworks”. They can be used to extract water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide, or store toxic gases.
Prof. Kitagawa works at Kyoto University in Japan, Prof. Richard Robson is at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Prof. Omar Yaghi is at the University of California in the United States.
It is the third science prize awarded this week. On Tuesday, John Clarke, Michel Devoret, and John Martinis won the Physics Nobel Prize for their work on quantum mechanics that paved the way for the quantum computer.
On Monday, three scientists’ work on how the immune system attacks hostile infections won them the prize for medicine.
One winner, Dr. Fred Ramsdell, did not receive the news for 20 hours because he was on an off-grid hiking trip.
