Omar M. Yaghi

I genuinely find Omar Yaghi one of the most quietly revolutionary scientists alive. Growing up in Amman and making his way to the University of Illinois, then building a career at UC Berkeley — that arc alone is remarkable. But what really gets me is what he actually built: metal-organic frameworks, these almost impossibly elegant porous structures that can capture gases, store hydrogen, and — this is the part that stops me cold — pull water straight out of desert air. The man invented a new branch of chemistry, reticular chemistry, basically from scratch. He stacked up a Wolf Prize, an Albert Einstein World Award of Science, a King Faisal Prize, and more, and in 2025 the long-whispered Nobel Prize in Chemistry finally came. The symmetry of a scientist from a dry, arid region spending his career figuring out how to harvest water from thin air feels less like coincidence and more like destiny.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Omar M. Yaghi

Name (Japanese)

オマー・ヤギー

Reading

おまー・やぎー

Born

February 9, 1965 (age 61)

Origin

Amman, Amman Governorate, Jordan

Occupation

chemist / university teacher

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aquarius / Snake

University

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Awards & achievements

• 2015 King Faisal International Prize in Science
• 2010 Centenary Prize
• 2017 Albert Einstein World Award of Science
• 2017 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award
• 2007 MRS Medal Award
• 2019 Gregori Aminoff Prize
• 2018 Wolf Prize in Chemistry
• 2015 Mustafa Prize

• Official sitehttps://yaghi.berkeley.edu/bio.html
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar%20M.%20Yaghi
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AA%E3%83%9E%E3%83%BC%E3%83%BB%E3%83%A4%E3%82%AE%E3%83%BC
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q743252

Tags

• Amman Governorate
• chemist
• university teacher

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.