In 2022, he built a solar device to extract water from Death Valley air; in 2025, he won a Nobel Prize

Between August 19 and 23, 2022, Omar Yaghi's team placed a thermos-sized cylinder in Furnace Creek, inside the Death Valley National Park. The device was not connected to anything and for three complete cycles of night and day the device extracted liquid water from the air of one of the driest and hottest places on the planet. Two years later, Yaghi's invention scored him a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the first to a Saudi national, according to a report by Vozpopuli.From humble beginnings to big solutionsOmar M. Yaghi was born in 1965 in Amman, Jordan, into a refugee family originally from Palestine. He grew up in a single room with his parents, eight siblings, and even livestock — a few cows. His father, who ran a butcher shop and raised cattle, insisted that his son pursue an education abroad. At 15, in 1980, with limited English, Yaghi moved alone to Troy, New York.He enrolled at Hudson Valley Community College shortly after arriving and then transferred to the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany in 1983, where he developed a deep passion for chemistry. To support himself during this period, Yaghi bagged groceries and mopped floors. He graduated cum laude in 1985 with a ...