Australian chemist at the University of Melbourne. He won the 2025 Nobel chemistry prize, alongside Kitagawa Susumu and Omar Yaghi, for his work on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs).
Dr Robson helped pioneer the field. Inspired by the ball-and-stick models familiar to generations of chemistry students, he worked out how to make copper ions and tetracyanotetraphenylmethane assemble themselves into a substance with the same pyramidal crystalline structure as diamonds, but with much bigger cavities in its crystal lattice—a house for chemicals that will happily build itself given the right conditions.
The strong give up and move away, while the weak give up and stay.