The Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien (the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) has announced that the 2019 Gregori Aminoff Prize in Crystallography will be awarded to Arizona State University Professor Michael O’Keeffe and University of California – Berkeley Professor Omar Yaghi.
While the announcement stressed metal-organic frameworks, the prize is “for their fundamental contributions to the development of reticular chemistry,” and the press release said:
“Michael O’Keeffe and Omar M. Yaghi have laid the foundation of reticular chemistry, where the whole idea is to create well-ordered coordination polymers. These materials are built according to simple structural principles; by varying the size of the ligands or functional groups bonded with the ligands, for example, series of materials with similar but regulated variable properties can be synthesized.”
The statement on the prize in general is: “The intention of the Gregori Aminoff Prize is to reward a documented, individual contribution in the field of crystallography, including areas relating to the dynamics of the formation and dissolution of crystal structures. Some preference shall be given to work that demonstrates elegance in its approach to the problem.”