Benjamin List, David WC MacMillan Receive 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Stockholm: Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis.

The two scientists have developed a precise new tool for molecular construction, which had a great impact on pharmaceutical research, and has made chemistry greener.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden.
Building molecules is a difficult art. Benjamin List and David MacMillan are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 for their development of a precise new tool for molecular construction: organocatalysis. This has had a great impact on pharmaceutical research, and has made chemistry greener, said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden in a statement.

Catalysts are fundamental tools for chemists, but researchers long believed that there were, in principle, just two types of catalysts available: metals and enzymes. The Academy said that Benjamin List, professor at the Max Plack Institute in Germany, and David MacMillan, who is currently with Princeton University, in 2000, independent of each other, developed a third type of catalysis. It is called asymmetric organocatalysis and builds upon small organic molecules.

“This concept for catalysis is as simple as it is ingenious, and the fact is that many people have wondered why we didn’t think of it earlier,” says Johan Åqvist, who is chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

“Benjamin List and David MacMillan remain leaders in the field and have shown that 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. In this way, organocatalysts are bringing the greatest benefit to humankind,” the Academy said.

“Chemistry was the most important science for Alfred Nobel’s own work. The development of his inventions as well as the industrial processes he employed were based upon chemical knowledge. Chemistry was the second prize area that Nobel mentioned in his will,” the Academy said.

The 2020 Nobel in Chemistry was awarded jointly to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for the development of a method for genome editing.