Stockholm – Zaytoun News
Palestinian-origin scientist Omar M. Yaghi was announced today, Wednesday, as one of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureates, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The Nobel Committee stated on its official X account that the prize was awarded to Omar Yaghi, Susumu Kitagawa, and Richard Robson in recognition of their pioneering work in developing metal, organic frameworks (MOFs).
The prize, which dates back more than a century, is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The laureates will share a monetary award of 11 million Swedish kronor (approximately 1.2 million USD).
Born in Amman in 1965, Yaghi is a Jordanian of Palestinian origin. He currently holds the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair in Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, serves as a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and is the founding director of the Berkeley Global Science Institute.
Yaghi has been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Between 1998 and 2008, he was ranked second among the world’s most influential scientists and engineers.
He obtained Saudi citizenship in 2021 and received the Arab Genius Award in 2024.
Yaghi began his academic journey at Hudson Valley Community College in the United States, later earning his B.Sc. from the University at Albany and a Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1990 from the University of Illinois. He then conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University (1990–1992) before teaching at the University of Arizona (1992–1998), the University of Michigan (1999–2006), and UCLA (2007–2012). He has been a professor at UC Berkeley since 2012.
Yaghi is recognized as the founder of Reticular Chemistry, a field that focuses on linking molecular building blocks with strong bonds to form open frameworks, most notably metal, organic frameworks (MOFs)—used in hundreds of scientific and industrial applications.
Throughout his distinguished career, Yaghi has received numerous prestigious awards, including the King Faisal International Prize in Chemistry (2015), the Mustafa Prize in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, and the Albert Einstein World Award of Science. He was also awarded the First-Class Medal of Excellence by King Abdullah II of Jordan in 2017.
In 2015, Professor Yaghi ranked the second-best chemist in the world in 2011, was previously nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
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