My reflections on Craig Venter for @chemistryworld.com. www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/the-...

Imagine if your circular cookie cutter suddenly started making star-shaped cookies! And could never make round ones again!! (That's the idea behind the illustration btw. Better ideas on a postcard, if you've got them).

Fantastic piece by @dereklowe.bsky.social. Feeds into an ongoing debate among scientists: is it possible to dedicate yourself to finding the truth about the real world, and not vocally oppose an administration that constantly undermines the truth? Is doing so political, or just being a scientist?

Glad to see this profile of Fritz Strassmann in @chemistryworld.com. As the standfirst says, his moral courage in the face of the Nazis does indeed deserve wider recognition. (You can read a briefer account of that in my book Servingh The Reich.) www.chemistryworld.com/features/fri...

Achievement unlocked!

We're all about the weirdly massive crystals today!

News you can use

It would be very difficult to separate hundreds and thousands (sugar strands) by colour - that's the thinking behind the image, by the way.

Applications for the internship are open now!

A search for "*chem*" in the Epstein files reveals: Lots of references (eg Whitesides' CV); a pool with algae needing treatment; typos for 'them'; messages to someone who was late because they had 'chem tutoring' (yikes)

Presented without comment

The 'Baghdad battery' was an unusual artefact discovered in Iraq in 1936. Now, a new reconstruction suggests it may have been more powerful than thought, equivalent to an AA battery.

Applications close on 12 January (that's next Monday) – don't miss the chance to further your sci-comm career by working with our team.

The unionisation of C&EN will confuse all their readers...

Join us!

My query made it! Have a read. It's been bothering me for years...

Some photos of the boss and his Nobel Medal, taken immediately after the ceremony. #NobelPrize #ozchem

This is a great dive into anthocyanins, tannins, and the oxidation chemistry of port in @chemistryworld.com 🍷

Richard Robson always had very small research groups and limited, sporadic funding. This has never been better illustrated than by the acknowledgement slides to the Nobel lectures of Robson, Kitagawa, and Yaghi (only 1 of 4 slides shown below). We punched above our weight! #ozchem #NobelPrize

I noticed exactly this walking from Kings Cross to Nature Towers last night: a queue of buses, taxis, cars and vans (cos roadworks) - but so quiet. Used to be deafening on York Way.

Don't have nightmares

I heartily agree. Worth it for the part-finished raised carvings alone – incomplete art, frozen in time. But also: a four-odd thousand year old dress! In pretty good nick! Rameses III's girdle!!

Glad to see AI has finally found its niche www.aptaclub.co.uk/baby/baby-to...

That's all folks!

This is a very well-written piece on this year's MOF Nobel prize with a lot of personal accounts from the community

Last week Susumu Kitagawa, Omar Yaghi and Richard Robson were awarded the #Nobelprize in #chemistry for their work developing metal-organic frameworks. Here I tell the story of how MOFs came to be - incl. an interview with Kitagawa himself! www.chemistryworld.com/features/how... @chemistryworld.com

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...

A fun read while getting my #MOF fix #chemsky #MOFs #NobelPrize #chemistry @chemistryworld.com www.chemistryworld.com/news/i-worke...

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....

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

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

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

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

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.

Always good to remember that the T in BET adsorption is Edward Teller, 'father of the H bomb'

In all seriousness, I've long been impressed by how MOFs bring together so many different bits of chemistry - a well deserved prize!

Ah, but is it [organic, solid state, coordination, physical] chemistry?

So what meeting has Kitagawa got to go to?? Hopefully champagne is involved!

I predict a lot of happy #OzChem ists

MOFs in a box

It's MOFs!

What's in the box?? #ChemNobel #ChemSky

Morning all. An exciting day in the chemistry calendar. The #NobelPrize in chemistry will be announced in a little over an hour. We're keeping track of all the developments as they happen at Chemistry World #chemnobel www.chemistryworld.com/news/the-202...

The laureates' 'prize-earning' papers in Phys Rev Lett, Phys Rev B from 1985 + 1987 have 276, 342 and 518 citations [Scopus] - low for Nobel-winning work, maybe? [1/2]

Electrons go wheeee

It's a good day for Johns in California! #PhysicsNobelPrize

Well that's perfectly clear. WTF??

Well that's perfectly clear. WTF??

In my very early days as a journal editor, somebody had a Word doc – several pages long – with the best comments from referee reports. It was pretty funny, but some of them probably belonged in this article www.nature.com/articles/d41...

While alchemy is increasingly seen as a precursor to modern chemistry, 'witchcraft' – practised by lower-status women – is still ignored. But was the 'magic', from flying ointments to healing potions, grounded in real pharmacology?