Nobel Prize 2021: Benjamin List, David MacMillan win Chemistry prize for development of asymmetric organocatalysis

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan “for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis.”

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 to Benjamin List from Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany and David W.C. MacMillan from Princeton University, USA. 

The prize amount of 10 million Swedish kronor, to be shared equally between the Laureates.

Benjamin List, born in 1968 in Frankfurt, Germany completed his PhD from Goethe University Frankfurt. He is serving as the Director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany.

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.

Benjamin List and David MacMillan are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 because in 2000 they, 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.

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