STOCKHOLM: German Benjamin List and Scotland-born David MacMillan won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for developing new tools for building molecules that have helped make new drugs and are more environmental friendly.
Their work on asymmetric organocatalysis, which the award-giving body described as “a new and ingenious tool for molecule building”, has also helped in the development of plastics, perfumes and flavours.
“Organic catalysts can be used to drive multitudes of chemical reactions. Using these reactions, researchers can now more efficiently construct anything from new pharmaceuticals to molecules that can capture light in solar cells,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.
Catalysts are molecules that remain stable while enabling or speeding up chemical reactions performed in labs or large industrial reactors. Before the laureates’ breakthrough findings at the turn of the millennium, only certain metals and complex enzymes were known to do the trick.
The academy said the new generation of small-molecule catalysts were friendlier to the environment and cheaper to produce, and praised the precision of the new tools.
Before asymmetric catalysis, man-made catalysed substances would often contain not only the desired molecule but also its unwanted mirror image.
About the duo
David MacMillan, 53, is a professor at Princeton University in the United States.
Benjamin List, 53, is director of the Max- Planck-Institut fuer Kohlenforschung, Muelheim an der Ruhr in Germany
The two scientists have found an “ingenious” new way to build molecules that can be used to make everything from medicines to food flavourings
They share the prestigious 10-million Swedish crown ($1.14-million) prize in equal parts for breakthroughs achieved independently of one another
Eureka moment
- List said he did not initially know that MacMillan was working on the same subject and figured his hunch might just be a “stupid idea” — until it worked
- “When I saw it worked, I did feel that this could be something big,” he said