The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to the German Benjamin List and the American David MacMillan
Benjamin List and David MacMillan share the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Jonathan NACKSTRAND AFP / File
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The Nobel Prize for Chemistry this year rewarded a duo of researchers for having developed methods to improve chemical reactions.
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The German Benjamin List and the American David MacMillan, both 53 years old, were distinguished by the Nobel jury in Stockholm on Wednesday October 6 for having developed in 2000 a new tool for constructing molecules, "
asymmetric organocatalysis
" .
It's a bit complicated but to go back to the basics, a chemical reaction occurs when you put reagents together.
A simple example that we all know, in the presence of water and oxygen, iron reacts: it is rust.
A catalyst is something that is added to this reaction to amplify it, accelerate it or even direct it.
Our body, for example, uses several which are involved in all the chemical reactions that allow us to live.
Of course, we also need catalysts to make everyday objects.
That's where David MacMillan and Benjamin List come in.
Less polluting
Before their work, it was believed that there were only two families of catalysts.
They developed a third, these asymmetric organocatalysts.
They have two major advantages.
They are simple and inexpensive to produce.
It only takes common elements like oxygen, carbon or even nitrogen to design them, which means that they are not polluting.
They are also very efficient and versatile: from molecules for new drugs to solar panel cells, their field of application is enormous.
"
They bring the greatest benefit to humanity,
" even wrote the Nobel committee.
The two researchers succeed the duo of French geneticists Emmanuelle Charpentier and American Jennifer Doudna for their "molecular scissors".
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