The day after winning science's most prestigious prize, Richard Robson was back in the tutorial hall teaching chemistry students about his passion of more than five decades.
Professor Robson was honoured with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for pioneering a new form of molecular architecture, alongside Japan's Susumu Kitagawa and American-Jordanian Omar Yaghi.
"The first thing he did this morning was come in and give a first-year tutorial," colleague and University of Melbourne chair of chemistry Paul Donnelly said.
Prof Donnelly added "he was given a vanilla slice by our head of school" after winning the global award.Â
Proud peers have heaped praise on the "quintessential" scientist and his revolutionary discovery.
"He's unassuming. He's humble. He's understated. He loves teaching. He loves his students," deputy vice-chancellor Mark Cassidy said of the university's home-made superstar.
The three laureates created metal-organic frameworks that can be used to harvest water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide or store toxic gases.
Prof Robson designed new molecular materials with voids containing certain chemicals that could store, capture and release other molecules.
The Nobel Committee likened the concept to a porous material about the size of a sugar cube that could contain as much surface area as a large football pitch.
"A small amount of such material can be almost like Hermione's handbag in Harry Potter," said Olof Ramstrom, member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.
Prof Robson said the concept occurred to him while building models for teaching and over a 10-year period, he would often revisit his framework and concepts while preparing lectures in his field of chemistry.
He avoided the attention on Thursday, ushering waiting media out of his tutorial room because he had a lesson to teach.
"This is definitely his worst nightmare," Prof Donnelly joked.
"It's not that he's not welcoming of the accolade, but he will find all this stuff an inconvenience to just going into the lab and doing some experiments."
Prof Robson has admitted his work might have easily been dismissed, recalling how some thought it was "a whole load of rubbish" when he began developing the idea in the 1970s.
Decades later at the ripe old age of 88, while he was sitting down for dinner with his wife when news of the prestigious accolade came through.
"I did finish my fish. It was a bit cold, and then I had to do the washing up so that's how it went," Prof Robson recounted.
He describes himself as a lone scientist with an "obsessive" habit of neglecting other responsibilities to aid his research.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese congratulated Prof Robson for his "world-leading research" that has the potential to tackle some of humankind's greatest challenges.
"The nature of Professor Robson's work is molecular, but the scale of its significance is absolutely enormous," he said in parliament.
The three chemists worked separately but added to each other's breakthroughs, which began with Prof Robson.
Prof Robson, who's the ninth oldest Nobel Prize winner, planned to celebrate the award modestly.
"I'm now 88. The people I knew 25 or 30 years ago are all dead or close to it, like myself," he said.
The oldest Nobel winner, at 97, was John B Goodenough, who also won the chemistry prize in 2019 for his development of lithium-ion batteries.