WHY IN THE NEWS?

• 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