The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021

• The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 was awarded jointly to Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan “for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis.”  This has had a great impact on pharmaceutical research and has made chemistry greener. 

• The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021.

• Catalysts are thus fundamental tools for chemists, but researchers long believed that there were, in principle, just two types of catalysts available: metals and enzymes. 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.