Nobel in chemistry hails ‘greener’ molecular build
Organic approach found to linking atoms faster
STOCKHOLM – Two scientists won the Nobel Prize for chemistry Wednesday for finding an “ingenious” and environmentally cleaner way to build molecules that can be used to make a variety of compounds, including medicines and pesticides.
The work of Benjamin List and David W.C. Macmillan has allowed scientists to produce those molecules more cheaply, efficiently, safely – and with significantly less hazardous waste.
“It’s already benefiting humankind greatly,” said Pernilla Wittungstafshede, a member of the Nobel panel.
It was the second time in as many days that a Nobel rewarded work that had environmental implications. The physics prize honored developments that expanded our understanding of climate change, just weeks before the start of global climate negotiations in Scotland.
The chemistry prize focused on the making of molecules. That requires linking individual atoms together in specific arrangements – a difficult and slow task. Until the beginning of the millennium, chemists had only two methods, or catalysts, to speed up the process, using either complicated enzymes or metal catalysts.
That changed when List, of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and Macmillan, of Princeton University in New
Jersey, independently reported that small organic molecules can be used to do the same job. The new tools have been important for developing medicines and minimizing drug manufacturing glitches, including problems that could cause harmful side effects.
Johan Åqvist, chair of the Nobel panel, called the 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.
Upon hearing the news, Macmillan said he was “stunned, shocked, happy, very proud.”
He said he didn’t expect to get a call from the Nobel committee. “I grew up in Scotland, a working class kid. My dad’s a steelworker. My mom was a home help . ... I was lucky enough to get a chance to come to America, to do my
PH.D.,” he said.
Macmillan’s inspiration came when thinking about the dirty process of making chemicals, one that requires precautions he likened to those taken at nuclear power plants.
If he could devise a way of “making medicines faster by a completely different way” that didn’t require vats of metal catalysts, the process would be safer for both workers and the planet. “We recognized that not only would it make it faster, cheaper, it would also make it better – better for the environment, better for the world,” he said.
List, 53, said he did not initially know that Macmillan was working on the same subject and figured his hunch might just be a “stupid idea” – until it worked.
“When I saw it worked, I did feel that this could be something big,” List said.