Science should be developed away from being 'exclusive club' - Nobel prize winner to F24

Summary

Omar M. Yaghi grew up in the Jordanian capital Ammann in a family of Palestinian refugees. He moved to the United States at the age of 15 and, working his way through academia via Community College, obtained a PhD in chemistry in 1990. He has held professorships at the University of Michigan, UCLA and the University of California at Berkeley. In 2025 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Susumu Kitagawa and Richard Robson, for his work on developing metal–organic frameworks. It was announced this week that Professor Yaghi is to join Tsinghua University in Beijing to lead a new AI-driven research centre.