Auf dem virtuellen GDCh-Wissenschaftsforum im August erhielt Omar Yaghi (pandemiebedingt etwas verspätet) die August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann-Denkmünze 2020. Diese Goldmedaille vergibt die GDCh seit 1903 für besondere Verdienste in der Chemie an ausländische Chemiker:innen und an deutsche Wissenschaftler:innen, die keine Chemiker:innen sind, aber für die Chemie Großes geleistet haben.

My biggest privilege as scientist is …

testing my ideas through laboratory experimentation and being able to judge based on evidence their success or ‘failure’. In other words, learning through scientific experimentation.

The biggest surprise of my career as a researcher was …

how slow new ideas and discoveries are embraced; yet we are in a profession, which foundationally relies on these new ideas and discoveries.

I studied chemistry because …

I was interested in the sheer beauty of molecules and how they provide eternal stimulation to the mind.

Which is the secret of your biggest success as a researcher?

passion for discovery.

A talent I’d like to have is …

patience for the mundane.

This is the ideal morning for me:

Enjoy sweets at breakfast with coffee first, then tea.

The best advice I ever got is:

Answer the question.

If I could be another person for one day, I would be …

Beethoven: It would be quite interesting to feel what he felt being a composer of music while dealing with his hearing disabilities

My best ideas arise while I’m …

reading the dictionary.

In a spare hour …

I listen to opera.

If I could spend a day with the person behind my prize‘s eponym, I would …

share with him my students’ great experiences and breakthroughs in using aniline (a molecule he spent a lot of time studying) to make single crystals of covalent organic frameworks, all organic frameworks.

Der US-amerikanische Chemiker Omar M. Yaghi, Jahrgang 1965, ist Professor an der University of California in Berkeley sowie Co-Direktor des Kavli Energy Nanosciences Institute und der California Research Alliance der BASF. Er forscht an metal organic frameworks und anderen Gerüsten, die Wasserstoff oder Kohlendioxid speichern und freisetzen können.