Nobel

Every few years the Nobel committee gives chemistry’s highest honour to something that hasn’t actually changed the world yet.

This year it went to the inventors of metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs: porous metal organic structures that can, in theory (especially if you’re writing a grant application) absorb gases, separate molecules, and generally perform miracles of selectivity.

The only commercial news is that BASF can now make hundreds of tonnes of the stuff, but it has nowhere to go yet. Still, it’s probably good for their stock price

So why give a Nobel prize to an invention that hasn’t had any real world impact?

I’d award the prize to a discovery that hasn’t had any impact yet. But not to an invention because it would be embarrassing if that impact never arrives.

Or would it?