“I grew up in a very humble home, there were a dozen of us in a small room,” recalls chemist Omar Yaghi.

They had to share that space even more: in one half “we slept, ate” and, in the other half, there were some cows that they raised.

The parents of Yaghi were Palestinians and, after being forced to leave their land, they arrived in neighboring Jordan, where he would be born in 1965.

Given the lack of basic services in the area where they lived, one of the tasks his parents him as a child was to fetch water.

The supply was made available to families in the area every two weeks for a few hours.

“We stored as much water as we could in those four hours; that was the water we gave would use for two weeks. If it ran out, we had to find another source,” the scientist said in a video for the Tang Prize, which he won in 2024.

He vividly recalled his childhood memories on Wednesday, October 8, when he received the news that he had won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

“I was born into a refugee family,” he told a reporter from the prize's website.

“I think my father He finished sixth grade, and my mother couldn't read or write.”

This is the story of the extraordinary journey of the man considered the father of the field of metal-organic frameworks.

The drawings that enchanted him

For Yaghi, his life “has been quite a journey,” one that science allowed him to take.

“Science is the greatest equalizing force in the world,” he noted.

The University of California, Berkeley professor shared the Nobel Prize with Susumu Kitagawa and Richard Robson.

The Swedish Academy of Sciences highlighted the feat of developing a “new molecular architecture” in the work of the three.

And in Yaghi's case, that development began with something he saw when he was 10 years old.

After managing to get into a library, he approached one of the shelves and grabbed a book at random.

The drawings of molecules absolutely captivated him, he said in the Tang Prize video.

And although he didn't know what the illustrations were about, that moment became a kind of treasure he wanted to keep secret.

He remembers being a quiet, independent child who loved to read and study.

While he was wondering “what things are made of,” he helped his father in a store he owned.

In a talk he gave to young people at Hsinchu Senior High School in Taiwan, he said that helping his father was absolutely crucial in making him “appreciate quality and hard work.”

Wiping down tables, cleaning windows, making the store look attractive to customers, he learned work ethic.

“He taught me that if you're going to do a job, you have to do it right. Otherwise, don't do it. That He taught me that every day.”

“An incredible commitment”

His father, who owned a butcher shop in Amman, the Jordanian capital, envisioned a different destiny for Yaghi and told him he wanted him to go to the United States to continue his education.

But at 15, Yaghi wanted to stay with his family, attend university, and work in Jordan.

His father insisted and convinced him.

“I am deeply moved by seeing how my refugee parents dedicated every minute of their time to their children and their education, which they saw as a way to get ahead, to overcome difficult situations. That requires an incredible commitment,” the scientist said at a press conference after hearing the Nobel news.

“And I didn't lack love. We didn't have many of the comforts that others had, but I did have a lot of love.”

He traveled and enrolled in a community college in New York.

“As a teenager, he made his own way in the United States,” Jorge Andres Rodriguez Navarro, a professor in the Department of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Granada, who maintains a relationship that is not only professional but also a friendship with the chemist, tells BBC Mundo.

Young Yaghi supported himself with the money he earned packing groceries and cleaning floors, while excelling academically. He graduated with honors as a chemistry major.

The education he received came to mind after learning he had won the Nobel Prize.

“This recognition is truly a testament to the power of the public school system in the United States, which takes people like me, who come from very disadvantaged backgrounds, from a refugee environment, and allows you to work hard and distinguish yourself,” he said.

“A great inspiration”

As a teacher, Yaghi has also left an impression on many students, researchers and colleagues from different countries.

“The first day I arrived at his laboratory, he gave me the keys to his office for me to use freely,and he went to the students' office. He is an incredible person,” chemist Daniel Maspoch, professor at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (Icrea), tells BBC Mundo.

“I was happy when I found out he had won the Nobel Prize.”

Maspoch had seen Yaghi at conferences, but it wasn't in 2019, when he invited him to Barcelona to give a talk, that he got to know him better.

The bond was strengthened in 2024, when Maspoch spent some time in Yaghi's laboratory.

“I was able to spend about three months with him and his group. It was an unforgettable experience. He is a very transparent person, he helps everyone, he is a great mentor, a great inspiration, especially for young scientists.”

“When you talk to He makes you realize that he really makes you think far beyond the science you do; he goes a step further.

“The degree of reflection he has leads you to moments where you feel that it's worth dedicating yourself to science. Seeing him in action is beautiful.”

“At the same level”

Professor Rodriguez has not only done work with Yaghi, but they are also friends that began about 25 years ago.

First they exchanged letters, then emails. The Spanish scientist told him that he was interested in the area he was working in.

Yaghi combined organic chemistry with inorganic chemistry when developing metal-organic structures.

“On the scientific side, he sees things with great depth, he's an innovator, he's made beautiful materials that are also useful,” explains Rodriguez.

“And on the human side, he's a very approachable person. You might think that a Nobel Prize winner is a conceited person, but he's not. emphasized the importance of always having open channels for questions and criticism.

“Students shouldn't be afraid to contradict their professor; when that happens, magic happens, you create magic because now you have two people analyzing a problem without being afraid to say: 'I don't know' or to share their valuable idea.

“You need both of them for a discovery to happen: the student is there, doing the experiment, making observations, making decisions about which observation to follow.”

“Start wherever you are”

After learning that he had won the Nobel Prize, Yaghi insisted on the importance of science in social development.

“You cannot solve society's problems without science. It takes science, materials, and the technology that goes with it,” he said at the press conference.

Many experts are optimistic about the future of metal-organic frameworks to address several of the challenges we face as a society.

For example, to combat climate change, to capture carbon dioxide and water in places where it is very difficult to access it, in the development of clean energy, in the field of biomedicine.

“These materials are one of the most precious, most important platforms in modern chemistry,” says Maspoch.

“Metal-organic frameworks have enormous potential, as they offer previously unthinkable opportunities to create tailor-made materials with new functions,” said Heiner Linke, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

Yaghi won the Tang Prize “for his extraordinary contributions to sustainable development with his pioneering metal-organic frameworks and other ultraporous frameworks that can be adapted for carbon capture, hydrogen storage, and methane, as well as harvesting water from desert air.”