Anthony Cheetham is a research professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, US. His research focuses on synthesis and characterisation of inorganic materials such as MOFs and perovskites. He is a former vice-president and treasurer of the Royal Society. In 2020, he received a knighthood for his services to materials chemistry, UK science and global outreach.
Anthony Cheetham is a research professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, US. His research focuses on synthesis and characterisation of inorganic materials such as MOFs and perovskites. He is a former vice-president and treasurer of the Royal Society. In 2020, he received a knighthood for his services to materials chemistry, UK science and global outreach. He was speaking to Philip Robinson
My childhood was quite simple. My father was a butcher, my mother a housewife. I never imagined then that I’d become a scientist.
I would have loved to be a professional cricketer and play for England. I was an all-rounder, but I wasn’t nearly good enough. Vinoo Mankad, who captained India, actually coached my team as juniors, which was amazing – to be competitive you really need good coaching.
Science felt like a level playing field. I didn’t grow up in a home with rows of books on shelves and things like that, and when I went to Stockport Grammar School, I felt at a disadvantage in terms of the humanities because my classmates’ parents had been to university and studied English or languages. But I didn’t know anyone whose parents were scientists, so it felt like there wasn’t an innate disadvantage there.
I was originally going to Bristol for university. But our Deputy Head encouraged me to try for Oxford. My physics teacher said I had no chance! But I was actually the first to be offered a place – I got in early through a new interview system and then spent my final year at school playing cricket and cards.
I tend to do things that aren’t fashionable and hope that one day they might become so
I don’t like telling people what to do. If I have a group of 10 people, I want us to be working on the ideas of 10 people. Sometimes that frustrates students, but it’s how you get into new areas. The most interesting things often come from ideas you wouldn’t have had yourself – I’ve learned far more from my students and postdocs than they have from me. That interaction is one of the most rewarding parts of the job. If you’re not learning more from a hundred people than they are learning from you, then something’s wrong!
I’m a bit of a contrarian. I tend to do things that aren’t fashionable and hope that one day they might become so. When we started working on MOFs in the early 2000s, I didn’t want to compete with the all the groups working on large-pore MOFs, so instead we looked at their physical properties, and that’s how we discovered ferroelectric MOFs and glassy MOFs. And now those are probably more fashionable than ever. It’s really taking off. Of course, I’ve also done lots of things that weren’t fashionable then and still aren’t today.
Most important materials are not discovered by design, but by taking something that already exists and using it in a way nobody had anticipated. The most exciting results are the ones you didn’t expect – when something happens that your chemical intuition doesn’t explain. If you get exactly what you expected, that’s not very exciting. It’s when something surprises you that you discover something new.
There’s a lot of beautiful chemistry in the MOF world, but much of it is impractical. If you want to capture CO₂, you don’t want a material that costs $100 per kilo. We worked on what I call the world’s simplest MOF – aluminium formate. I remembered Omar Yaghi saying that if he could think of a good acronym for a new MOF then he could market it. So I called it ‘ALF’, and that really captured people’s imagination. It has remarkable properties, and I think potentially we can make it for a $1 per kilo. That’s the kind of thing that has the potential for large scale applications.
The big question for me is whether artificial intelligence can discover genuinely new and useful materials that we wouldn’t have thought of ourselves. I hope it can, but at the moment, there’s no convincing evidence. Predicting useful materials is much harder than predicting protein structures. So far, AI has predicted lots of compounds, but a compound is not really a material unless it’s got some functionality. And you don’t know if it’s got functionality until you make it and test it – the vast majority are not going to be useful for any applications. AI should be another tool for the chemist – not a replacement for them.
One of the problems science faces today is communicating its importance to the public, particularly in the US. Sadly, science has become less valued and, in some cases, even viewed with suspicion. We’ve seen how investment in science – like mRNA vaccines – can save millions of lives, yet funding is still being cut in critical areas. The US has always been the premier league of science – that’s why I came here – and now it’s throwing that lead away.
I’ve always been interested in investment and business. I co-founded a venture capital fund in Santa Barbara and another with Unilever, and I became the Treasurer of the Royal Society. I’ve become progressively more interested in translating lab discoveries into applications and wealth creation. When I was at Oxford in Chemistry, doing applied things was rather looked down upon, but if you’re going to be serious about doing materials chemistry, then you have to contemplate the possibility that something you do might be useful. And then the question is, what do you do about it?
I’ve always enjoyed travelling. When our kids were young, my wife and I said, ‘Instead of leaving you money, we’re going to take you around the world to new places and open your minds.’ We took them to places like Bolivia and China 25 years ago. It was not so fashionable as it is now.
As told to Philip Robinson
