4 / 2021 // LEOPOLDINA / NEWS 5
Leopoldina member Benjamin List receives Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Catalysis researcher has been honoured together with British scientist David W . C . MacMillan
Benjamin List is one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research .
Image : Frank Vinken | MPI for coal research
Chemist and Leopoldina member Benjamin List has been awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize for Chemistry together with David W . C . MacMillan , a British scientist currently working in the USA . The two scientists have received this honour for their work to develop asymmetric organocatalysis , a technique that can be used to build molecules and is helping to make chemistry greener . lysts have long been known for increasing the rate of chemical reactions and making them more efficient . Prior to the discoveries by List and MacMillan , there were only two types of catalysts : metal catalysts and enzymes .
“ We couldn ’ t be happier that a member of the Leopoldina has been rewarded for their ground-breaking research work .”
Gerald Haug President of the Leopoldina
Organocatalysts have now been added as a third type , allowing for small organic molecules to be used as catalysts in chemical reactions for the first time . To-
Benjamin List has been one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Mülheim a . d . Ruhr since 2005 . The fundamental findings that led to organocatalysis were made separately by List and David MacMillan , a British researcher based at the University of California in Irvine / USA , in the year 2000 .
Benjamin List discovered that a protein element , the amino acid proline , could act as an efficient catalyst . Cataday this technique is already widely used to produce various drugs as well as lightabsorbing chemicals used in solar cells .
Benjamin List studied chemistry at the Freie Universität Berlin and received his PhD from the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main in 1997 . From 1999 to 2003 , he conducted research at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla / USA . He became a member of the Leopoldina in 2018 .
President of the Leopoldina Gerald Haug congratulated List : “ Groundbreaking scientific discoveries relating to asymmetric organocatalysis have been honoured with this year ’ s Nobel Prize in Chemistry . We couldn ’ t be happier that a member of the Leopoldina has been awarded this prestigious prize for their research work . ”
■ AB
Benjamin List