UC Berkeley Professor Wins Nobel Prize In Chemistry

BERKELEY, CA — A UC Berkeley professor was one of three people awarded a Nobel Prize on Wednesday for their contributions in the field of chemistry.

Omar Yaghi was awarded the prize for his work in helping develop a new form of molecular architecture that can be used to harvest water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide, store toxic gases or catalyse chemical reactions, according to the Nobel Prize Foundation.

These frameworks have the potential of bringing "unforeseen opportunities for custom-made materials with new functions,” Heiner Linke, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said in a statement Wednesday.

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Yaghi shares the award with Susumu Kitagawa from Kyoto University in Japan and Richard Robson from the University of Melbourne in Australia.

The path to their Nobel Prize started with Robson in 1989, who positively charged cooper ions with a four-armed molecule. When combined, it formed a diamond-like crystal with innumerable large spaces that allowed gases and other chemicals to flow through, according to the Nobel Prize Foundation. These compounds came to be known as metal-organic frameworks (MOF)

However, the MOFs proved to be unstable and would collapse easily. Yaghi and Kitagawa are credited with creating a more stable MOF with a firm foundation, according to the Nobel Prize Foundation.

Yaghi is the 28th UC Berkeley faculty member to win a Nobel Prize and the fifth winner in the last five years, according to university officials. His win comes a day after a retired UC Berkeley professor, John Clarke, shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in physics with two UC Santa Barbara faculty members.

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