Published 6 October 2021 at 12.15
Domestic. Benjamin List and David MacMillan are awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for providing molecular designers with a new tool: organocatalysis. It has had a major impact on drug research.
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Many research areas and industries depend on chemists' ability to construct molecules that can, for example, provide elastic and durable materials, store energy in batteries or slow down disease processes in the body.
This work requires catalysts. These are substances that control and drive chemical reactions, without themselves becoming part of the end product. In cars, for example, catalysts convert toxic substances in the exhaust gases into harmless molecules. There are thousands of catalysts in our body in the form of enzymes, which chisel out the molecules needed to live.
Catalysts are thus fundamental tools for chemists, but for a long time researchers believed that there were basically only two different types of catalysts available: metals and enzymes.
Benjamin List and David MacMillan are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2021 because in 2000, independently of each other, they developed a third form of catalysis. It is called asymmetric organocatalysis and is based on small organic molecules.
– This concept for catalysis is as simple as it is ingenious, and the fact is that many have wondered why it was not invented before, says Johan Åqvist, who is Chairman of the Nobel Committee on Chemistry, in a statement.
Organic catalysts have a stable body of carbon atoms. The carbon body then contains more active chemical groups, which often contain oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur or phosphorus. These are common elements, which makes the catalysts both environmentally friendly and cheap to produce.
The fact that the use of organic catalysts has exploded, however, is mainly due to the fact that they can drive so-called asymmetric catalysis. In the construction of molecules, situations often arise where two different molecules can be formed which – just like our hands – are mirror images of each other. Many times chemists only want one of these, especially in the manufacture of medicines.
Since the year 2000, organocatalysis has developed at a furious pace. Benjamin List and David MacMillan are still leaders in the field.
“They have shown that organic catalysts can be used to drive a variety of chemical reactions. “molecules that can capture light in solar cells. In this way, various organocatalysts now make humanity the greatest benefit”, writes Kungl. Academy of Sciences.