As a student, Susumu Kitagawa read a book that talked about an old Chinese philosopher, Zhuangzi, who argued that we should question everything we believe is useless. Even if it doesn’t provide an immediate benefit (or we can’t see it), that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable .
Kitagawa could devote himself to that idea in any field of human activity. But, since the book was by the Japanese physicist (and Nobel Prize winner) Hideki Yudaka, he decided to dedicate himself to basic science . The most useless of the useless.
What’s the Point of Continuing to Work on Something Like This?
In ’92, when he presented his first molecular construction , the truth is that his work honored that uselessness : “a two-dimensional material with cavities where acetone molecules could be hidden.” The curious thing, however, is that “he used copper ions linked together by larger molecules” like pieces of a puzzle .
The curious thing for us now is that in the first half of the 90s, no one paid the slightest attention to him. Kitagawa wanted to continue working with this type of material, but the answer (again and again) was always the same: No. In the following years, each and every one of the aid he requested was denied.
He, of course, did not give up. Not even when he created a stable material in ’97 (capable of absorbing and releasing methane, nitrogen, and oxygen without changing shape) did luck smile on him: no one saw its appeal . It’s not that they were bad, but there were better things. What was the point of continuing to work on something like that?
The Desire Not to Need ‘Luck’
The answer to that Omar Yaghi had it. In that same year, 1992, Yaghi achieved his great research project under the premise that “the traditional way of building new molecules was too unpredictable for him.” Until then, chemists were just putting things in a container, heating them, and seeing what happened. Yaghi aspired to find more controlled ways of creating materials.
Jordan’s team began to obtain good results when they began to combine metal ions with organic molecules. They had found, so to speak, their Lego pieces : the elements that held the most diverse molecules together and stable. Does it look familiar to you? It was just the same approach that Kitagawa had independently implemented.
And yes, indeed, no one thought it was something very useful. At least, it didn’t generate very useful things.
Back to the Origins
So both Kitagawa and Yaghi set about tracing backgrounds for this new way of doing chemistry. There they met a speculative article published in ’89 by the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The author, Richard Robson, worked in Australia and had been thinking about all this since 1974.
In those years, Robson was in charge of converting wooden balls into “atomic models” with which students could create molecular structures and become familiar with the world of chemistry.
To do this, he asked the university workshop to drill holes in the balls. In this way, thanks to some wooden rods (the chemical bonds ), the atoms could be built. Next, Robson realized that the holes could not be placed randomly. Each atom forms chemical bonds in a specific way, and if he wanted to make the model realistic, he needed to mark where the holes should be drilled.
That’s what gave him the clue: there was an incredible amount of information in the position of the links. Furthermore, these links hid the key to building new molecular structures easily and simply .
Three Ways to Arrive at the Same Way of Building the World
Johan Jarnestad/Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Metal-organic structures (which is what these types of structures are called) serve almost everything: they can capture carbon dioxide, separate PFAS from water, administer drugs to the body, or manage extremely toxic gases. Some can trap ethylene gas from the fruit (so it ripens more slowly); others can encapsulate enzymes that break down antibiotic residues in the environment.
That is to say, we are talking about one of the most versatile technologies today, and for years, they were considered completely useless . What I’ve said before: pure basic science. A uselessness so enormous that it has the potential to change the world.
Image | Boasap (modified)
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