Chemistry for the Future Solvay Prize

Paul Baekelmans

doi:10.1515/ci-2018-0403

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Chemistry for the Future Solvay Prize

Paul Baekelmans

Published/Copyright: October 29, 2018

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From the journal Chemistry International Volume 40 Issue 4

The 2017 ceremony and following reception for the “Chemistry for the Future Solvay Prize” took place in Brussels on 22 November 2017 to reward Professor Susumu Kitagawa for “The Development of Metal Organic Frameworks,” a new class of nanoporous materials with unprecedented morphological characteristics and promising new applications in the future.

The laureate received the award from His majesty King Philippe of Belgians and Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, CEO of Solvay during the ceremony in presence of a fascinated and prestigious audience.

And what about Science?

The formal moment of the Prize presentation was followed by a lecture by Vincent Ginis, the young Belgian physicist (Solvay Award in 2014) designated as one of the top 50 tech pioneers in Belgium in 2017. His particular area of study is optics, but he made a strong case for the combination of different scientific disciplines, or “languages,” to drive progress in research.

Meet the Jury: Standing from Left to right: Christophe Dobson, Patrick Maestro, Anne de Wit, Paul Baekelmans, Jean-Marie Lehn, Paul Chaiki; sitting, Håkan Wennerström (president of the Jury) and Gerhard Ertl

He delivered a speech on a topic as fascinating as unexpected: how interdisciplinary science is on the verge of making invisibility a reality!

Then came Professor Susumu Kitagawa on stage.

Professor Susumu Kitagawa is Director of the Institute for Integral Cell-Material Sciences at Kyoto University. As a pioneer and leading scientist in the field of porous coordination polymers and, more specifically, “Metal Organic Frameworks” (MOFs), he gave a comprehensive voyage in the world of pore/size/shape controlled innovative technology giving access to materials with a specific area twice as big as a football ground but a mass of just 1 gram!

The potential range of future applications for MOFs is rather large and is mainly related to their absorption capability. They include gas storage and release (methane, CO, CO₂, hydrogen, etc.), specific catalysis, drug delivery, insulating material, the management of indoor air quality, etc.

Prof. S. Kitagawa’s achievements meet very well the Solvay prize objectives, created in 2013 to celebrate its founding 150 years earlier by Ernest Solvay and to perpetuate his commitment as a dedicated and inspired supporter of scientific research. Every two years, the prize of € 300,000 aims to recognize a major scientific discovery that lays the foundation for the chemistry of the future, while promoting human progress.

Designation of Prof. S. Kitagawa as the third laureate, by the jury, following a long process with the target of excellence, as was described in Chemistry International Vol 38, No 5 (2016) is well in line with his predecessors, Prof Peter Schultz (Scripps Inst.) and Prof Ben Feringa (University of Groningen) Nobel Laureate 2016.

His majesty King Philippe of Belgians (left) and Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, CEO of Solvay (right) present the award to Prof. KItigawa.

Vincent Ginis gives a lecture promoting interdisciplinary science.

On the following day, Solvay young scientists and the Solvay Research Fellows met Prof. S. Kitagawa to discuss about his career and his outstanding research work. They brainstormed about the potential applications of MOFs at industrial scale. “There is still a lot of work to be done between academic and industrial people to develop the good process to make MOFs available industrially in an economical way and with the good properties.“ Industry must first, however, overcome the technology challenges of MOFs large scale production.

By Dr. Paul Baekelmans

Science Adviser Solvay

Online erschienen: 2018-10-29

Erschienen im Druck: 2018-10-01

©2018 IUPAC & De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For more information, please visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/ci-2018-0403