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Kitagawa of kyoto university.
An avid reader since his junior high school days, Kitagawa said the foundation for his focus on the countless pores in materials came from books he read as a freshman at Kyoto University.
In books by famed physicist Hideki Yukawa, Kitagawa was captivated by the Lao-Zhuang philosophical concept of “muyo-no-yo” (the usefulness of the useless), the idea that things that appear to have no purpose are, in fact, useful.
For example, a saying from the legendary Chinese philosopher Laozi goes, “We knead clay to make pottery. The inside of the pottery may seem like a useless empty space, but it is the empty space that makes the pottery useful.”
Chemistry typically focuses on matter—that is, things packed with atoms and molecules. But Kitagawa focused on the “pores,” which are empty spaces.
“That idea—that even nothingness has meaning—had a huge impact on me,” he explained. “A pore seems useless. But if you put atoms or molecules in it, store them, or transform them, it becomes useful. Just a shift in perspective can change everything.”
An avid reader since his junior high school days, Kitagawa said the foundation for his focus on the countless pores in materials came from books he read as a freshman at Kyoto University.
In books by famed physicist Hideki Yukawa, Kitagawa was captivated by the Lao-Zhuang philosophical concept of “muyo-no-yo” (the usefulness of the useless), the idea that things that appear to have no purpose are, in fact, useful.
For example, a saying from the legendary Chinese philosopher Laozi goes, “We knead clay to make pottery. The inside of the pottery may seem like a useless empty space, but it is the empty space that makes the pottery useful.”
Chemistry typically focuses on matter—that is, things packed with atoms and molecules. But Kitagawa focused on the “pores,” which are empty spaces.
“That idea—that even nothingness has meaning—had a huge impact on me,” he explained. “A pore seems useless. But if you put atoms or molecules in it, store them, or transform them, it becomes useful. Just a shift in perspective can change everything.”
