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Neil Withers @neilwithers.bsky.social · 9m

Also featuring structures and graphs from the kind folks at the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre - we know you lot love structures and graphs...

Neil Withers @neilwithers.bsky.social · 11m

Julia's also got input from tons of other MOF experts, including @sbattenresearch.bsky.social who did his PhD with Robson in this area in the very early days.

Go and read it! Well done @robinson-julia.bsky.social , top work

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Neil Withers @neilwithers.bsky.social · 13m

(I think he was quite pleased to go into some detail about the chemistry, and talk about how copper(I) has a full d10 shell, so no d-d transition, etc, rather than how he felt when he found out and what he'll do with the money etc)

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Neil Withers @neilwithers.bsky.social · 14m

Here it is! The full #LongRead feature article on this year's #ChemNobel - @robinson-julia.bsky.social managed to speak to Kitagawa yesterday!

www.chemistryworld.com/features/how...

How the pioneers of metal-organic frameworks won the Nobel prize

From wooden models to thousands and thousands of structures, Julia Robinson tells the story of how Richard Robson, Susumu Kitagawa and Omar Yaghi won the 2025 Nobel prize in chemistry

www.chemistryworld.com

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Neil Withers @neilwithers.bsky.social · 36m

Remember?? Recommend.

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Neil Withers @neilwithers.bsky.social · 36m

I can remember the search engine shortcut type things in Chrome, where you can set it up to start your query with 'wiki' or 'MW' or whatever to search just those places (or CW or CEN etc etc)

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Reposted by Neil Withers

Jet Lee @jetsinglee.bsky.social · 5d

A fun read while getting my #MOF fix

#chemsky #MOFs #NobelPrize #chemistry @chemistryworld.com

www.chemistryworld.com/news/i-worke...

‘I worked on it little by little, with the help of a beer’: Making MOFs out of paper

Chemistry World talks to Ryo Horikoshi about engaging students with chemistry concepts using his stunning paper models

www.chemistryworld.com

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Neil Withers @neilwithers.bsky.social · 6d

The hyphen page www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/... covers N-dashes (ranges and joining things like Jahn–Teller); the dash page www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/... covers M-dashes (broadly, just parenthetic punctuation)

The Hyphen : The Hyphen and the Dash

www.sussex.ac.uk

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Neil Withers @neilwithers.bsky.social · 6d

This will clear things up www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/...

The Hyphen and the Dash

www.sussex.ac.uk

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Neil Withers @neilwithers.bsky.social · 7d

Ooh, looking back at the Nobel nominations database, which now goes up to 1974, John Goodenough was first nominated *in 1974* - before he'd even made a battery, and 44 years before he won it....

Reposted by Neil Withers

Stuart Batten @sbattenresearch.bsky.social · 7d

Just a little humble brag. Here's me getting my PhD with my supervisors - Bernard Hoskins and newly minted #NobelPrize Laureate Richard Robson. So thrilled for Richard, and thinking also of Bernard tonight (who passed away many years ago but was a crucial collaborator of Richard's). #Chemsky #ozchem

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Neil Withers @neilwithers.bsky.social · 7d

Come on, spill the beans!!

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Neil Withers @neilwithers.bsky.social · 7d

Here's your mission: to find out who Robson will be cheering for in the Ashes!

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Neil Withers @neilwithers.bsky.social · 7d

Can't wait to see the write-up of the MOF/[porous] coordination polymer/whatever nomenclature debate on the BBC!!!

Screenshot of text: However, while the term ‘coordination polymer’ had been in use since 1916,25 no established definition of this field existed at the time. Therefore, different terminology was being used to describe
similar structures while the area matured. For example, ‘infinite polymeric frameworks’, ‘coordination networks’, or ‘network structures’ were used in addition to coordination polymer. The
wildly popular term ‘metal–organic framework’ and its abbreviation ‘MOF’ appeared in the second half of the 1990s,21,26 while the alternative phrase ‘porous coordination polymer’ (‘PCP’) was
introduced in the early 2000s.27 For clarity, the currently recommended terminology from IUPAC
distinguishes the following structures:28 a coordination polymer is ‘A coordination compound
with repeating coordination entities extending in 1, 2, or 3 dimensions.’; a coordination network
is ‘A coordination compound extending, through repeating coordination entities, in 1 dimension,
but with cross-links between two or more individual chains, loops, or spiro-links, or a coordination compound extending through repeating coordination entities in 2 or 3 dimensions.’; and a
metal–organic framework is ‘A metal–organic framework, abbreviated to MOF, is a coordination
network with organic ligands containing potential voids.’ Within this classification system, MOFs
constitute a subset of coordination networks, which in turn constitute a subset of the overall group
of coordination polymers.

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Neil Withers @neilwithers.bsky.social · 7d

Thank you, I've just been reading it!

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Neil Withers @neilwithers.bsky.social · 7d

I always say that although the Nobel gets criticised it is definitely good for one thing: getting some proper chemistry* in front of people's eyeballs, once a year.

So it's great to see this real in-depth reporting from the Guardian:
www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Oh.

*and biology

A screenshot of a very short news story: "The Nobel prize in chemistry 2025 has been awarded to three scientists for developing revolutionary porous materials for applications ranging from gas storage to drug delivery.

Susumu Kitagawa, at Kyoto University, Richard Robson, at the University of Melbourne, and Omar Yaghi, at the University of California, Berkeley, share the 11m Swedish kronor (about £871,400) prize announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.

The trio were honoured “for the development of metal-organic frameworks”."

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Neil Withers @neilwithers.bsky.social · 7d

I didn't realise Robson was from Yorkshire! Just 12 miles (as the crow files) from where Geoffrey Wilkinson was born...

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Reposted by Neil Withers

Jamie Gould @jamieagould.bsky.social · 7d

Another person who would surely have been in contention is Gérard Férey, who sadly passed away in 2017. His MIL-53 and MIL-101 structures continue to wonder and show new applications.