🏆Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 goes to Benjamin List and David MacMillan for their discovery and development of organic catalysts (organocatalysis).
We rarely consider how the materials we use everyday are made. Unless it’s a completely raw material, it was synthesized by chemical reaction in a manufacturing plant. Organic chemists are the masterminds behind these chemical reactions, and the Nobel Prize winners today have dramatically improved chemical synthesis – making it cheaper, greener, and more efficient.
Chemical reactions are often powered, or sped up, by catalysts – materials that don’t change in the chemical reaction but are important for the synthesis to work. Metals are historically the standard for catalysis but can unfortunately be difficult to work with on a large-scale, have the potential to be harmful to the environment, and often produce symmetrical products (meaning that both mirror image versions of a molecule are produced, even if only one is desired).
List and MacMillan both made big discoveries around replacing metals with organic molecules to catalyze reactions. This has the effect of making manufacturing easier, having less negative effects on the planet, and allowing for asymmetrical production (meaning the desired orientation molecule can be selected for).
Together, the work of these newly named Nobel Laureates, has dramatically improved our chemical synthesis capabilities, which affects our day to day lives more than we even realize.