Omar M. Yaghi

Omar M. Yaghi was born in Amman, Jordan, to parents who were Palestinian refugees. At 15, encouraged by his father to study in the United States, he moved to New York. He went on to earn a BS in chemistry from State University of New York at Albany and a PhD in inorganic chemistry from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

He is widely known for studying the design and construction of new crystalline materials. In the 1990s, Yaghi helped create a field called reticular chemistry, which involves combining molecular building blocks into porous frameworks that can absorb, store, and release gases and vapors. Materials he has pioneered are capable of capturing and converting carbon dioxide, harvesting water from the air, storing methane, and more. 

Today, Yaghi is the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. He is also the founding director of the Berkeley Global Science Institute and codirector of the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute, the California Research Alliance by BASF, and the Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet.  

In 2025, Yaghi received a shared Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing metal-organic frameworks that absorb water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide, and store toxic gases. His other honors include the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the VinFuture Prize, the Albert Einstein World Award of Science, and the Science for the Future Ernest Solvay Prize. 

“I was born in a family of refugees, and my parents barely could read or write,” he told the Nobel Prize committee. “So it’s quite a journey, and science allows you to do it. I mean, science is the greatest equalizing force in the world.”

Published June 2026