BERKELEY — Palestinian refugee in Jordan, chemist Omar Yaghi won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on metal–organic frameworks (MOFs). He shares the award with Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne and Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences praised the trio for “creating molecular constructions with large spaces through which gases and other chemicals can flow.” MOFs can store, filter, and transform molecules, with applications in clean energy, carbon capture, and water harvesting.
Yaghi, originally from Al-Masmiyya al-Kabira Village, which was depopulated by zionist militias in 1948, was born in Amman in 1965 to a family of Palestinian refugees. He spent his childhood in modest conditions and later moved to the United States to pursue his education. He studied at Hudson Valley Community College and earned a BSc in Chemistry cum laude in 1985. He completed his PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1990.
Yaghi held postdoctoral and faculty positions at Harvard, Arizona State University, University of Michigan, and UCLA before joining UC Berkeley in 2012. He leads research programs that promote global scientific collaboration, including the Berkeley Global Science Institute, which has research centers in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
In his first remarks after receiving the Nobel Prize, Yaghi described science as an “equalising force” that allows anyone, anywhere, to contribute to humanity. “Science levels the playing field,” he said.
His work on MOFs has helped develop materials that can capture carbon dioxide, store hydrogen and methane, and extract drinking water from arid air. Yaghi’s research bridges organic and inorganic chemistry and has influenced clean energy and sustainability efforts worldwide.
Yaghi is a member of multiple scientific academies, including the US National Academy of Sciences and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He has received numerous awards, such as the 2024 Tang Prize in Sustainable Development, the 2018 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, and the 2025 Von Hippel Award. — QNN
