Susumu Kitagawa

Susumu Kitagawa is a Japanese chemist, born in Kyoto on 4 July 1951, who specialises in coordination chemistry, in particular organic and inorganic hybrid compounds and the chemical and physical properties of porous coordination polymers, especially metal-organic frameworks. He took his PhD in hydrocarbon chemistry at Kyoto University in 1979, taught at Kindai University, became professor of inorganic chemistry at Tokyo Metropolitan University in 1992 and returned to Kyoto University in 1998. In 2007 he co-founded the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences there, which he directed from 2013 to 2023. In 1997 he demonstrated that coordination polymer structures can adsorb gases, a key finding for functional porous materials, and he later wrote influential reviews on porous coordination polymers and on soft porous crystals that change structure when stimulated. His honours include the Humboldt Research Prize, the Japan Academy Prize, election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2023, and the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, shared with Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi for their foundational work on metal-organic frameworks.