First reactions | Richard Robson, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025 | Telephone interview

“Some people thought it was a whole load of rubbish. But it didn’t turn out that way.” Richard Robson’s new concept for molecular architecture, which occurred to him while building models for teaching, was the starting point for the burgeoning field of metal–organic frameworks. In this conversation with the Nobel Prize’s Adam Smith, recorded just after his Nobel Prize in Chemistry was announced, he recounts how this new idea emerged and how, in the end, he just had to do something about it. He also offers some modest reflections on a long life in chemistry, which he says wasn’t exactly a vocation: “I sort of drifted into it, I couldn’t think of anything better to do.”

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