Three of the six U.S. winners in the 2025 Nobel Prize science categories immigrated to the United States, one of them as a teenager. These examples of immigrants contributing to science and technology fields come as Trump officials have proposed or enacted new policies to restrict immigration, including that of highly skilled individuals. The Trump administration’s policies include limiting international students to fixed entry periods and restricting H-1B visas, which are typically the only practical way for high-skilled foreign nationals to work in the United States. The measures include imposing a $100,000 fee on the entry of many H-1B visa holders, as well as an upcoming H-1B rule. The latest Nobel Prize announcements provide an opportunity for Americans to learn more about the achievements of their fellow citizens.
Since the beginning of the 20th century and over the past 25 years, immigrants have demonstrated a remarkable capacity to excel in scientific fields. “Immigrants have been awarded 40% of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in chemistry, medicine and physics since 2000,” according to an analysis by the National Foundation for American Policy.
In 2025, Omar M. Yaghi, the only U.S. winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry, was an immigrant. Two of the three U.S. recipients of the Nobel Prize in physics were also immigrants: Michel H. Devoret, born in France, and John Clarke, born in the United Kingdom, shared the Nobel Prize for physics with U.S.-born John M. Martinis. The three men were awarded the prize “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.”
According to the Nobel Prize committee, “The transistors in computer microchips are one example of the established quantum technology that surrounds us. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics has provided opportunities for developing the next generation of quantum technology, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers and quantum sensors.”
Devoret’s affiliation at the time of the award was as a professor at Yale University and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Clarke’s affiliation was as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, which educators note means both men also contribute to science in America by teaching students.
In 2023, four of the six U.S. recipients of Nobel Prizes in medicine, chemistry and physics immigrated to America. Katalin Karikó, an immigrant from Hungary, shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Drew Weissman “for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.” In 2021, three of the four U.S. recipients of Nobel Prizes in medicine, chemistry and physics were immigrants to the United States.
Between 1901 and 2025, immigrants have been awarded 36% of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in chemistry, medicine and physics, according to NFAP’s research.
Despite this history, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller wrote (on May 31, 2025) on X.com, “During the middle of the 20th century—when the U.S. achieved unquestioned global scientific dominance—there was net zero migration. From the 20’s to the 70’s the foreign-born population was cut almost by half while the overall population doubled. (Until Hart-Celler kicked in).”
Analysts point out that Miller’s statement overlooks the significant scientific achievements produced by immigrants in the post-war period. Between 1945 and 1974, 16 of the 30 U.S. winners of the Nobel Prize in physics were immigrants, according to NFAP. Between 1945 and 1974, 15 of the 36 U.S. Nobel Prizes in medicine, or 42%, were awarded to immigrants. Albert Sabin, an immigrant from Poland, and Jonas Salk, the son of an immigrant, developed the vaccines that ended polio as a threat to Americans. Both men were in America due to family immigration. “Without Sabin and Salk, American children would continue to be paralyzed for life by polio,” Michel Zaffran, director of polio eradication at the World Health Organization, told me in an interview. “Their contribution is quite simply immeasurable.”
The 1924 Immigration Act, which reduced the flow of immigrants by approximately 90% and blocked Jews, Eastern Europeans and Asians, harmed America economically. According to research by New York University economists Petra Moser and Shmuel San, the restrictive immigration quotas of the 1920s significantly reduced invention in the United States, including by American-born scientists. “After the quotas, U.S. scientists produced 68% fewer additional patents in the pre-quota fields of ESE-born [Eastern and Southern European immigrant] scientists compared with the pre-quota fields of other U.S. scientists,” write Moser and San.
Omar M. Yaghi, an immigrant from Jordan and a faculty member at UC Berkeley, shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Susumu Kitagawa of Japan and Richard Robson of Australia. “The Nobel Prize laureates in chemistry 2025 have created molecular constructions with large spaces through which gases and other chemicals can flow,” according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. “These constructions, metal–organic frameworks, can be used to harvest water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide, store toxic gases or catalyse chemical reactions.”
Yaghi was born in Jordan to a poor refugee family. “At the age of 15, he was told by his father that he must go to the U.S. to study and, within the year before he graduated from high school, he had obtained a visa and settled alone, in Troy, New York, to pursue his college education,” according to UC Berkeley. “With a poor grasp of English, Yaghi took courses in English, math and science at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy before transferring to the State University of New York at Albany in 1983.”
“I was in love with chemistry from the very beginning,” said Yaghi. “And when I moved to Albany, I immediately got into research. I was doing three different projects with three different professors at the same time: a physical organic project with one professor, a biophysical project with another and a theory project with a third professor. I really loved the lab. I disliked class, but I loved the lab.”
Yaghi supported himself “bagging groceries and mopping floors.” He graduated in 1985 from the State University of New York at Albany with a B.S. in chemistry and completed a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He held faculty positions at Arizona State, the University of Michigan and UCLA before joining the chemistry faculty at UC Berkeley and becoming director of the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2013.
In some ways, Yaghi’s journey to America bears similarities to that of Ardem Patapoutian, an immigrant from Lebanon, who shared the 2021 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. Dr. Patapoutian came to Los Angeles at age 18 after being “captured and held by armed militants” during Lebanon’s civil war. He told the New York Times, “I fell in love with doing basic research. That changed the trajectory of my career.” Illustrating how immigration can change an individual’s horizons and allow them to fulfill their potential, he said, “In Lebanon, I didn’t even know about scientists as a career.”
Omar Yaghi said after earning his Ph.D., he was determined to break new ground in science. “Yaghi essentially combined the fields of organic chemistry—the chemistry of carbon compounds—and inorganic chemistry, which deals with everything else, and extended those fields to 2D and 3D materials,” according to UC Berkeley.
“Professor Yaghi doesn’t end with groundbreaking science of both a basic and practical nature, but he combines this with the desire to mentor and outreach also on a global scale,” said Anne Baranger, interim dean of the UC Berkeley College of Chemistry. “He’s established an entire institute in order to really bring up the best and the brightest and provide opportunities across the entire world.”
Yaghi has never forgotten his humble immigration origins. “I was born in a family of refugees, and my parents barely could read or write,” he said in an interview with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. “It is quite a journey, and science allows you to do it. Science is a great equalizing force in the world.” He said, “Smart people, talented people, skilled people, exist everywhere. That’s why we really should focus on unleashing their potential through providing them with opportunity.”