STOCKHOLM: Saudi-American scientist Omar M. Yaghi’s career has been shaped by a rare combination of intellectual audacity and personal history — a lifelong drive to push science beyond known limits, while never losing sight of its capacity to serve humanity.
In 2025, that journey culminated in global recognition when Yaghi became the first Saudi national to receive a Nobel Prize, and only the second Arab-born laureate to be awarded the chemistry prize, after the Egyptian-American scientist Ahmed Zewail in 1999.
Yaghi shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with British-Australian scientist Richard Robson and Japanese scientist Susumu Kitagawa.
After stints with Arizona State University, University of Michigan and UCLA, Yaghi joined UC Berkeley in 2012, where he currently holds the James and Neeltje Trett Chair. (AFP)
Together, the three were recognized for more than half a century of contributions to the development of metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs — porous, sponge-like materials with vast internal spaces capable of storing carbon dioxide or harvesting water from the air.
