An eighty-eight-year-old Melbourne professor has been awarded this year's Nobel prize in chemistry. Richard Robson is known for pioneering the development of what are known as "metal-organic frameworks" which have laid the foundation for experiments to try and suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.
00:00It was just an ordinary day when Richard Robson found out he'd won a Nobel Prize.
00:07I'd cooked the fish and we were sitting down to have it, my wife and I, and then all this commotion started.
00:17It started as an idea in 1974 and led to decades of work developing a new way of organising matter through molecular constructions.
00:27It's led to new materials that can make toxic gas non-toxic or even harvest water from desert air.
00:35It's been referred to as Hermione's magic handbag.
00:38Things just keep coming out of it. Well you can keep putting things into, you can put air or liquid.
00:43But in the 1970s it was a tough sell. Professor Robson's work described as a load of rubbish.
00:49The possibility right from the start was obvious that you could get substrates to come in through the channels.
00:56The undergo reaction at these active sites dangling into the channels and be able to leave so you could have catalysts.
01:05Richard thought of this idea. No one else thought about it. He put it together. He would say that it was so obvious.
01:11It inspired thousands of scientists across the world to study it.
01:15Scientists say there is potential for this to be developed into a revolutionary product that can capture greenhouse gases and reduce emissions.
01:23The potential and the vision is there and the next step is we've made the new materials but it's going to become an issue in manufacturing and reproducibility and how these materials stand up against other materials.
01:34The Nobel prize ceremony will be in Norway in December.
01:41And so on that's it!
01:43The Nobel Prize in energies are the attributed to our ship.
01:48At this moment states are not really good, but that's exactly what we call it.
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