Health, planet, self: after - 'Can molecular Lego save the planet?'

Ack: © Johan Jarnestad /
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

'This morning’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry is one that’s been anticipated for several years now: it goes to Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto, Richard Robson of Melbourne, and Omar Yaghi of Berkeley for metal-organic frameworks.'

'So what’s a MOF? This goes back to the idea of “coordination chemistry”, a huge topic in the inorganic and metal-organic fields.'

 

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Metal-Organic Frameworks 

Can conceptual Lego - 'human-metal organic frameworks' -
save healthcare, planetary and self-care?

'One astonishing characteristic is the amount of surface area locked away in these new materials: a MOF weighing one gramme can have an internal surface area the size of a football pitch^. MOFs are often likened to Hermione Granger's bottomless handbag in the Harry Potter books: a tiny exterior concealing a seemingly infinite interior. Rice University chemist Stavroula Alina Kampouri has called MOFs "magical sponges", describing them as "not just elegant crystals you'd admire under a microscope; they're an entire universe of structures, each like a miniature city of tunnels and rooms waiting to be filled."'

Anjana Ahuja, Can molecular Lego save the planet?, Opinion Science. Financial Times, 15 October 2025, p.22.

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'This is not an ivory-tower sort of topic, though: the importance of these sorts of complexes cannot be overstated. They were the basis for the first Nobel awarded in inorganic chemistry (1913, Alfred Werner) and metal coordination is how the iron atoms in hemoglobin carry oxygen to the cells of your body to keep you alive, for starters. You can say the same thing about photosynthesis in plants, and about the actions of the many crucial enzymes in every living creature on the planet that have metal-ion centers in them. Outside of biology and biochemistry, the structures of minerals similarly cannot be understood without a knowledge of coordination chemistry.'

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Metal-Organic Frameworks

Popular information. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach 2025. Mon. 27 Oct 2025. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2025/popular-information/>

^Is this a question for BBC Radio 4 More or Less?

Of course, I keep posting about the Nobel Prize in the hope of a prize - due recognition for Hodges' model. Discretely of course, given a limited readership. 
Go figure: in 3D naturally.

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025

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'This year’s prize relates to the explanations for sustained growth based on technological innovation. Economic historian Joel Mokyr is rewarded with one half of the prize for his description of the mecha­nisms that enable scientific breakthroughs and practical applications to enhance each other and create a self-generating process, leading to sustained economic growth. Because this is a process that challenges prevailing interests, he also demonstrates the importance of a society that is open to new ideas and permits change.' 'The other half of the prize is awarded to the economists Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt. In a joint publica­tion from 1992, they constructed a mathematical model of how companies invest in improved pro­duction processes and new, better-quality prod­ucts, while the companies that previously had the best products are outcompeted. Growth arises through creative destruction. This process is creative because it builds upon innovation, but it is also destructive because older products become obsolete and lose their commercial value.'

'It is apparent that, in the long run, sustained growth does not only have positive consequences for human wellbeing. First, sustained growth is not synonymous with sustainable growth. Innovations can have significant negative side effects. Mokyr argues that such negative effects sometimes initiate processes that uncover solutions to problems, making technological development a self-correcting pro­cess. Clearly, however, this often requires well-designed policies, such as in the areas of climate change, pollution, antibiotic resistance, increasing inequality and the unsustainable use of natural resources.'

Source: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2025/popular-information/

Previously on W2tQ: 'Nobel prize' : 'socio-economics'

The 2025 peace laureate

The 2025 peace laureate

'The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 to Maria Corina Machado “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

In the past year, Ms Machado has been forced to live in hiding. Despite serious threats against her life she has remained in the country, a choice that has inspired millions of people. She has brought her country’s opposition together. She has never wavered in resisting the militarisation of Venezuelan society. She has been steadfast in her support for a peaceful transition to democracy.'

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María Corina
Machado	Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach

Nobel Peace Prize 2024

'The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 to the Japanese organisation Nihon Hidankyo. This grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, is receiving the Peace Prize for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.

In response to the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945, a global movement arose whose members have worked tirelessly to raise awareness about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of using nuclear weapons. Gradually, a powerful international norm developed, stigmatising the use of nuclear weapons as morally unacceptable. This norm has become known as “the nuclear taboo”.

The testimony of the Hibakusha – the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – is unique in this larger context. ...'

Press release. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Sat. 19 Oct 2024. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2024/press-release/>

Previously: Nobel Prize :: peace

1989 SHADES OF GREY, Computer Aided Learning program, BBC Micro. Simulation of nuclear weapons, Based on Fanchi, J. Local effects of nuclear weapons, BYTE, Volume 11. Issue 13. Dec., pp. 143–155. Computer Aided Learning program, BBC Micro, published by Open Software Limited.
https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/2024/03/jones-publications-list.html

Diagrams, Visualizations, Intuition and Critical Thinking QED

"The atom of Niels Bohr, a miniature solar system, had become a embarrassingly false image. ... Bohr himself had set the tone. In accepting the Nobel Prize for his atomic model, he said it was time to give up the hope of explanation in terms of analogies with everyday experience. 'We are therefore obliged to be modest in our demands and content ourselves with concepts that are formal in the sense that they do not provide a visual picture of the sort one is accustomed to require. . . .' This progress had not been altogether free of tension. 'The more I reflect on the physical portion of Schrödinger's theory, the more disgusting I find it,' was Heisenberg's 1926 comment to Pauli. 'Just imagine the rotating electron who charge is distributed over the entire space with axes in 4 or 5 dimensions. What Schrödinger writes on the visualizability of his theory . . . I consider trash.' As much as physicists valued the conceptualizing skill they called intuition, as much as they spoke of a difference between physical understanding and formal understanding, they had nevertheless learned to mistrust any picture of subatomic reality that resembled everyday experience. No more baseballs, artillery shells, or planetoids for the quantum theorists; no more idle wheels or wavy lines. Feynman's father had asked him, in the story he told many times: 'I understand that when an atom makes a transition from one state to another, it emits a particle of light called a photon. . . . Is the photon in the atom ahead of time? . . . Well, where does it come from, then? How does it come out?' No one had a mental image for this, the radiation of light, the interaction of matter with the electromagnetic field: the defining event of quantum electrodynamics." p.242.

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reflection critical thinking intuition	physics Bohr's atomic model reflection

Gleick, J., (1992) GENIUS - Richard Feynman and modern physics, London: Little Brown and Company, p.242.

International Women's Day: Nobel - Music

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	Happy International Women's Day! We're celebrating women who have changed the world. Here's all of the amazing women who have received the #NobelPrize and their remarkable achievements at the time of the award. Who are the women who inspire you the most?#IWD2023 pic.twitter.com/roRhfO7qCd — The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) March 8, 2023
Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World

When you look at Hodges' model, how would you assign the achievements of these particular Nobel Prize winners to the domains of Hodges' model?

My source: 

McAfee, A. "They shall be heard", Life&Arts, FTWeekend, 25-26 February, 2023, p.9.  And Twitter.

Book: "Economists"

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	Economists Photographs by Mariana Cook; Edited with an Introduction by Robert M. Solow Yale University Press

My source:
Tim Harford, The changing face of economics, FT Magazine, 21/22 December 2019, pp. 26-33.

Book: "Good Economics for Hard Times"

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	Good Economics for Hard Times Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems Abhijit V. Banerjee Esther Duflo

Hodges' model provides interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary bridges across often disparate fields of knowledge and specialties (epistemologies). In this instance consider SOCIO-economics, the consumerism of supply and demand. The influence of this in the economics of health care and the environment. The impact of relentless growth when values are knotted with value and commodified.

Even the book's cover points to the preoccupation of economics with mechanics (process!?). The view of economies as machines, which this book and the work of the authors and others now seeks to challenge and change.


Abhijit V. Banerjee, Esther Duflo (2019) Good Economics for Hard Times, Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems, Allen Lane, ISBN: 9780241306895

My source:
Ed Conway. Fighting the fake news with hard evidence, The Times, Saturday Review. December 14, 2019, p.16.