Two Scientists Win Nobel Prize In Chemistry

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

The prestigious prize is worth 10 million Swedish Kronas ($1.15 million).

List is from Germany and MacMillan is a Briton from Scotland.

The scientist won the prize for creating “an ingenious tool for building molecules” that helped develop new drugs and made chemistry greener.

The pair were awarded the prize “for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis.”

Their discoveries “initiated a totally new way of thinking for how to put together chemical molecules,” said, a member of the chemistry Nobel committee, Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede.

Wittung-Stafshede added that “This new toolbox is used widely today, for example in drug discovery, and in fine chemicals production and is already benefiting humankind greatly,”