David MacMillan and Benjamin List win chemistry prize for designing tools that have helped make new drugs and are more environmentally friendly
Secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Goran K Hansson and Nobel committee members Pernilla Wittung-Stafhede and Peter Somfai, attend the announcement of the 2021 Nobel prize in chemistry winners Benjamin List and David MacMillan, in Stockholm, Sweden, October 6 2021. Picture: CLAUDIO BRESCIANI/TT NEWS AGENCY/REUTERS
"Organic catalysts can be used to drive multitudes of chemical reactions," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said."Using these reactions, researchers can now more efficiently construct anything from new pharmaceuticals to molecules that can capture light in solar cells." Before asymmetric catalysis, man-made catalysed substances would often contain not only the desired molecule but also its unwanted mirror image. The sedative thalidomide, which caused deformities in human embryos around six decades ago, was a catastrophic example, it said.
"But today we didn’t even make the joke and certainly didn’t anticipate this - and then Sweden appears on my phone... it was a very special moment that I will never forget," he said, dialling into the media briefing announcing the winners. "I am shocked and stunned and overjoyed," MacMillan, who is also 53, said in statement from Princeton, the US university where he works.
"Organocatalysis was a pretty simple idea that really sparked a lot of different research, and the part we're just so proud of is that you don’t have to have huge amounts of equipment and huge amounts of money to do fine things in chemistry," MacMillan said.
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