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<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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 \u00a0appeal\u00a0. It’s not that they were bad, but there were better things. What was the \u00a0point\u00a0 of continuing to work on something like that?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The answer to that Omar Yaghi had it<\/a>. 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 \u00a0seeing\u00a0 what happened. Yaghi aspired to find more controlled ways of creating materials. <\/p>\n Jordan’s team began to obtain \u00a0good results\u00a0 when they began to combine metal ions with organic molecules. They had found, so to speak, their \u00a0Lego pieces\u00a0: 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. <\/p>\n And yes, indeed, no one thought it was something very useful. At least, it didn’t generate very useful things.<\/p>\n So both Kitagawa and Yaghi set about tracing backgrounds for this new way of doing chemistry. There they met a speculative article<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n In those years, Robson<\/a> was in charge of \u00a0converting\u00a0 wooden balls into “atomic models” with which students could create molecular structures and become familiar with the world of chemistry. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n To do this, he asked the university workshop to drill holes in the balls. In this way, thanks to some wooden rods (the chemical \u00a0bonds\u00a0), the atoms could be built. Next, Robson realized<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n That’s what gave him the clue: there was an incredible amount of \u00a0information\u00a0 in the position of the links. Furthermore, these links hid the key to building new molecular structures \u00a0easily\u00a0 and \u00a0simply\u00a0. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Metal-organic structures (which is what these types of structures are called) serve almost everything<\/a>: 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.<\/p>\n That is to say, we are talking about one of the most \u00a0versatile technologies\u00a0 today, and for years, they were considered completely \u00a0useless\u00a0. What I’ve said before: pure basic science. A \u00a0uselessness\u00a0 so enormous that it has the potential to \u00a0change\u00a0 the world.<\/p>\nThe Desire Not to Need ‘Luck’<\/h2>\n
Back to the Origins<\/h2>\n
![\"Constructing](\"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/the-tale-of-a-method-so-ineffective-that-it-was.jpeg\"\/)
\n <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\nThree Ways to Arrive at the Same Way of Building the World<\/h2>\n
![\"Metal-organic](\"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1759978744_529_the-tale-of-a-method-so-ineffective-that-it-was.jpeg\")
\n ![\"Metal-organic](\"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1759978744_529_the-tale-of-a-method-so-ineffective-that-it-was.jpeg\"\/)
\n Johan Jarnestad\/Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences<\/span>\n <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n