The chemical toolkit that won a Nobel
A German and a Briton have won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for pioneering a unique way to build molecules
A BREAKTHROUGH
Benjamin List and David Macmillan have built what the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (which hands out the Prize) said was "a new and ingenious tool for molecule building"
The method they developed was cheaper and friendlier for the environment.
The process has been widely applied including in the development of pharmaceuticals and the construction of solar panels.
THEIR METHOD
Making molecules — which requires linking individual atoms together in specific arrangement — is a difficult and slow task. Until the beginning of the millennium, chemists had only two methods — or catalysts — to speed up the process.
That all changed in 2000, when List, of the Max Planck Institute, and Macmillan, of Princeton University, independently reported that small organic molecules can be used to do the same job as big enzymes and metal catalysts.
The new method, known as asymmetric organocatalysis, "is used widely today, for example, in drug discovery and in fine chemicals production," said
Wittung-stafshede.
WHY IT BECAME IMPORTANT
Before asymmetric catalysis, man-made catalysed substances would often contain not only the desired molecule but also its unwanted mirror image. The sedative thalidomide, which caused deformities in human embryos around six decades ago, was a catastrophic example. Johan Åqvist, chair of the Nobel panel, called the new method as “simple as it is ingenious.” “The fact is that many people have wondered why we didn’t think of it earlier,” he added.
HN Cheng, president of the American Chemical Society, said the laureates developed “new magic wands.” Before the laureates' work, “the standard catalysts frequently used were metals, which frequently have environmental downsides,” said Cheng. “They accumulate, they leach, they may be hazardous."
Peter Somfai, another member of the committee, stressed the importance of the discovery for the world economy. “It has been estimated that catalysis is responsible for about 35% of the world’s GDP, which is a pretty impressive figure,” he said. “If we have a more environmentally friendly alternative, it’s expected that that will make a difference.”
WHAT THE LAUREATES SAID
List, 53, said the academy caught up with him while on vacation in Amsterdam with his wife, who in the past had liked to joke that somebody might be calling him from Sweden. "But today we didn’t even make the joke and certainly didn’t anticipate this - and then Sweden appears on my phone... it was a very special moment that I will never forget," he said, dialling into the media briefing announcing the winners.
"I am shocked and stunned and overjoyed," Macmillan, who is also 53, said in statement from Princeton, the U.S. university where he works.
"It was funny because I got some texts from people in Sweden really early this morning and I thought they were pranking me so I went back to sleep. Then my phone starting going crazy."