Professor Richard Robson elected Fellow of the Royal Society

Professor Richard Robson, Professorial Fellow in the School of Chemistry, has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society for his outstanding contribution to science.

Professor Robson has had a distinguished career marked by being the founder of the prolific field now known as metal organic frameworks (MOFs).

Professor Robson joins more than 60 exceptional scientists from around the world who have been elected Fellows and Foreign Members of the Royal Society.

University of Melbourne Dean of Science Professor Moira O’Bryan, said Professor Robson was a worthy recipient of the coveted title.

“Richard has quietly transformed chemistry over the past 50 years, and I am thrilled that his contribution is being recognised by the Royal Society,” Professor O’Bryan said.

President of the Royal Society Sir Adrian Smith, said he was pleased to see so many new Fellows working in areas likely to have a transformative impact on our society over this century.

Through a series of trailblazing experiments in the late 1980's and early 1990's, Professor Robson showed that it was possible to construct an almost limitless range of solids using coordination polymers, each with its own unique and potentially useful properties.

Researchers from around the world have subsequently generated and studied thousands of coordination polymers - some under the pseudonym MOFs.

Such tailor-made structures promise useful applications, providing controllable, tunable properties in areas such as gas and energy storage, and chemical reactors.

Head of the School of Chemistry Professor Richard O’Hair, said the entire school community was buzzing about this announcement.

“Richard is a much-loved member of our school and is also one of our longest serving academics. His initial breakthrough in developing MOFs came from his observations of the chemical models he had built in the 1970s for teaching our undergraduate chemistry students, which are still being used today,” Professor O’Hair said.

Read more about Professor Robson’s discovery of MOFs on Pursuit.