Omar M. Yaghi

By Erik J. Larson, PhD

Yaghi is the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Yaghi received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the State University of New York-Albany in 1985, and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Illinois-Urbana in 1990. He was then a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University for two years, working with the chemist Richard Holm.

Yaghi is widely considered the pioneer of reticular chemistry, a branch of chemistry concerned with combining molecular building blocks together to synthesize new compounds and materials. Such products have proven beneficial in clean energy technologies such as hydrogen and methane storage.

Yaghi is the second most cited chemist in the world! He has received awards for the design and synthesis of important materials by the American Chemical Society as well as industry giants like Exxon, notably with the Solid State Chemistry Award. The American Association for the Advancement of Science awarded him the Newcomb Cleveland Prize, and he won the Chemistry of Materials Award from the American Chemical Society in 2009. As if these weren’t enough, the World Cultural Council awarded the Albert Einstein World Award of Science. He also received the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 2018.

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