Swedish monarch confers 2025 Chemistry Nobel on US-Palestinian scientist
Pioneer of metal-organic frameworks honored alongside British-Australian and Japanese co-laureates
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (MNTV) — King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden presented the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to American-Palestinian chemist Omar M. Yaghi.
The award honors his decades-long leadership in developing metal-organic frameworks — porous, sponge-like structures now central to capturing carbon, storing gases, and harvesting water in arid regions.
Yaghi received the prize jointly with British-Australian researcher Richard Robson and Japanese chemist Susumu Kitagawa.
The three scientists, who will share the $1.2 million award, have collectively shaped the field over half a century, transforming MOFs from laboratory curiosities into scalable systems used in environmental and industrial applications.
Born in Jordan to a Palestinian refugee family displaced in 1948, the 60-year-old Yaghi becomes the Palestinian national to win a Nobel Prize and bein the second Arab-born laureate in chemistry since Ahmed Zewail’s 1999 recognition.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said MOFs, built with large internal cavities, can “harvest water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide, store toxic gases, and catalyze chemical reactions,” underscoring their versatility as climate-relevant tools.
Yaghi’s early fascination with extracting water from dry air — shaped by a childhood in which water was delivered to homes every two weeks — led him to pioneer field tests in the Arizona desert in the 1990s. His MOF-303 design later became a reference point for atmospheric water collection technologies.
In addition to his academic work as the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair in Chemistry at UC Berkeley, Yaghi has expanded into scientific entrepreneurship.
Since 2018, he has founded or co-founded several companies, including Atoco for carbon capture and water extraction, H2MOF for hydrogen storage, and WaHa Inc., which is deploying MOF-based water systems across the Middle East.
His scientific reputation previously earned him the King Faisal International Prize (2015) and Saudi citizenship granted by King Salman in 2021.
At the Nobel Prize Museum, where laureates traditionally donate objects representing their scientific journeys, Yaghi joins a legacy that includes Zewail, who constructed an interactive model of his famed “femtochemistry apparatus” for display in 2001 — an exhibit that remains one of the museum’s most prominent attractions.
The ceremony in Stockholm concluded a week of public engagements by laureates in literature, chemistry, physics, medicine, and economic sciences.
Simultaneously in Oslo, the Nobel Peace Prize was accepted on behalf of Venezuelan opposition figure Maria Corina Machado by her daughter, after authorities barred Machado from traveling.
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