13.10.2025 - 09:57 [ Washington Post ]

A long ‘journey’ for Nobel chemistry winner born to Palestinian refugees

(October 8, 2025)

U.S. chemist Omar Yaghi, who on Wednesday became the first Palestinian scientist to win a Nobel Prize, reached the pinnacle of his profession after “quite a journey,” he said in remarks posted to X from the official Nobel account, recorded just after he learned the news.

He was born into a family of refugees, he told the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awarded him the Nobel Prize in chemistry for groundbreaking work in molecular architecture, along with collaborators Susumu Kitagawa and Richard Robson. “My parents could barely read or write,” he said.