Omar M. Yaghi

... last year, which honestly, i- I don't think you guys understand the, the probability of getting this right in all of chemistry, in all of medicine, in all of physics, to get the, the, the prediction right is, is not easy.

But I got Omar Yaghi.

Yes.

Um, we've talked about him a lot actually on this podcast, not just for the Nobel Prizes, but also for his transfer to China-

I'll give you two examples.

So three weeks back, the Chinese, Tsinghua University, they hired an American Muslim called Omar Yagi.

Omar Yagi Shiv is a Nobel laureate in chemistry.

Nobel laureate.

And why did they pick him up? To head the Department of AI for Advanced Materials in Singwa University, which is deeply integrated with the PLA.

So this is what needs to happen, you know, a doctrinal debate.

We need to surge ahead in the talent race.

I gave you the example of Omar Yagi.

Give me an example of where you think this is, you know, really powerful that, that really excites you.

[lip smack] So, um, about four years ago, I started working with Omar Yaghi, who last fall won the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

He knew no AI, [lip smack] and I knew essentially no chemistry.

And we worked also with my husband, Christian Borgs, and with other people.

So each week on this show, I'm given a personal pick, so that's the chance to tell any story that I'd like to with the help of the bottomless well of the BBC's audio archives.

So digging around in there from last year and a Science in Action episode, they did a show about the Nobel Prize winners and winning the Nobel Prize for chemistry, here's Omar Yaghi explaining MOF or metal organic framework, his prize-winning material.

They're extremely porous.

In, in one gram of such material, uh, you could have the footage of, you know, 10, 20 apartments, or you could say more than a football field.

So over the years, we've learned how to fashion space, uh, let's say architect space or sculpt space.

We're, we're like molecular architects in terms of encompassing space with matter.

matter.That's Omar Yaghi.

So these new materials have been on the cards for a Nobel Prize for a while, but I think the main reason that they were given last year is that it w- it became very clear that they have all sorts of uses.

Exactly.

It reminds me of another laureate from 2025, Omar Yagi, who was awarded the Chemistry Prize.

Mm-hmm.

And when he was a fairly similar age, living as a refugee in Jordan, he discovered pictures of molecules in a chemistry textbook in the library and had no idea apparently what they meant, but thought they were beautiful.