Palestinian chemist Omar M. Yaghi, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his groundbreaking work in developing metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). He shares the award with Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University and Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne.
Yaghi, born in Jordan to Palestinian refugee parents, is the first Palestinian scientist and the first person born in Jordan to receive a Nobel Prize.
He learned about his Nobel win while changing flights and said he was “astonished, delighted, and overwhelmed” by the news. Speaking to NobelPrize.org, he reflected on his humble beginnings, saying, “My parents could barely read or write. It’s been quite a journey. Science allows you to do it. My father finished sixth grade, my mother could not read and write. Science is the greatest equalising force in the world.”
Widely known as the father of metal-organic frameworks, Yaghi was granted Saudi citizenship in 2021. His fascination with molecules began early in life, inspired by their “beauty.” At 15, he left Jordan for the United States on his father’s advice to pursue education, eventually earning a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University.
Reflecting on his career, Yaghi said, “My dream was to publish a paper that would get 100 citations. Now my students say our group has garnered over 250,000 citations. It was totally unexpected.”
In 2015, he received the King Faisal International Prize for Science for his pioneering work in molecular architecture.
Recalling his modest upbringing, Yaghi said, “I grew up in a very humble home and we were a dozen of us in one small room, sharing it with the cattle we used to raise.”
“It’s been quite a journey,” he said — a journey that began in hardship and culminated in one of the highest honors in science.
