At around 5:49 pm Beijing time on October 6, the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was announced. The 2021 Nobel Prize individual prize is 10 million Swedish kroner.

Author｜Feng Lifei Mei Jin

Beijing time at around 5:49 pm on October 6, Beijing time, the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was announced. German and American scientists Benjamin Lister and David W.C. Macmillan were awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "development in asymmetric organic catalysis."

Nobel Prize in 2021 is 10 million Swedish kroner (approximately RMB 7.36 million).

Benjamin List, born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1968. In 1997, he obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Frankfurt . Currently a researcher at the MaxP Coal Research Institute in Germany.

David W.C. MacMillan was born in Bells Hill, England in 1968. In 1996, he obtained his Ph.D. from , , University of California, Irving. Currently a professor at Princeton University in the United States.

A clever tool for constructing molecules

Constructing molecules is a difficult art. German scientist Benjamin List and American scientist David MacMillan were awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a new tool for precise molecular construction—organic catalysis. This result has had a huge impact on drug research and makes chemistry more environmentally friendly.

Many research fields and industries rely on chemists to build molecules that form elastic and durable materials, store energy in batteries, and inhibit disease progression. This work requires catalysts, which are substances that control and accelerate chemical reactions, but will not become part of the final product. For example, catalysts in automobiles convert toxic substances in waste gas into harmless molecules. The human body also contains thousands of catalysts in the form of enzymes that carve out the molecules necessary for life.

Therefore, catalysts are the basic tool for chemists. But researchers have long believed that in principle there are only two catalysts: metals and enzymes. Benjamin List and David MacMillan were awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry because in 2000, they each independently developed a third catalysis. It is called asymmetric organic catalysis and is built on the small organic molecule . "The concept of catalysis is simple and clever, and in fact, many people are wondering why we didn't think of it earlier," said Johan Åqvist, chairman of the Nobel Committee on Chemistry. "The concept of catalysis is simple and clever, and in fact, many people are wondering why we didn't think of it earlier."

Organocatalysts have a stable carbon atom framework where more active chemical groups can be attached. They usually contain common elements such as oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur or phosphorus. This means that these catalysts are not only environmentally friendly, but also cost-effective to produce. The rapid expansion of the use range of organic catalysts is mainly due to its ability to drive asymmetric catalysis. When molecules form, two different molecules are often generated, just like our hands, mirroring each other. Chemists usually only need one of them, especially when producing medicines.

Since 2000, organic catalysis has been developing at an astonishing rate. Currently, Benjamin List and David MacMillan remain leaders in this field, and they have demonstrated that organic catalysts can be used to drive a large number of chemical reactions. Using these reactions, researchers can now build many things more efficiently, such as new drugs, molecules that can capture light in solar cell , and so on. In this way, organic catalysts bring the greatest benefits to humans.

List of Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry in the past 6 years

2020—French and American scientists Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna won the award, and the reason for winning was "developing a genome editing method."

2019 - Three scientists in the United States and Japan, John B Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittlingham, and Akira Yoshino, won the award, and the reason for winning was "contributions to the development of lithium-ion battery ".

2018—American scientist Frances H. Arnoid won the award, and the reason for winning was "studying the directional evolution of enzymes"; the other two winners were George P. Smith from the United States and Sir Gregory P. Winter from the United Kingdom, and the reason for winning was "studying phage display technology of pepticine and antibodies."

2017 - Three scientists in Switzerland, the United States and the United Kingdom, Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson won the award. The reason for the award was "developed cryo-electron microscope for high-resolution determination of biomolecular structure in solution."

2016—France, the United States, Honland3 scientists Jean-Pierre Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa won the award, and the reason for the award was "design and synthesis of molecular machines."

2015—Sweden , the United States, Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar won the award, and the reason for the award was "Research on the Mechanism of DNA Repair".

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

—As of 2020, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded 112 times, and the 8 years that have not been awarded were 1916, 1917, 1919, 1924, 1933, 1940, 1941 and 1942.

—From 1901 to 2020, a total of 186 people won the awards, and the actual winners were 185, because British scientist Frederick Sanger won the awards twice in 1958 and 1980.

——Of all the awards awards, 63 were individual winners, 24 were shared by 2 people, and 25 were shared by 3 people.

—The youngest winner is French scientist Frédéric Joliot. He won the award in 1935 with his wife Irène Joliot-Curie for "synthetic new radioactive element ". He was 35 years old.

—The oldest winner is American scientist John B. Goodenough, who won the award in 2019 for "contributions to the development of lithium-ion batteries" at the age of 97. He is also the oldest winner of any Nobel Prize winner to date.

——Of all the 185 Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry, 7 women. They are , , 1911 (Mrs. Curie also won the Physics Award in 1903), Irène Joliot-Curie in 1935, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin in 1964, Ada Yonath in 2009, Frances H. Arnold in 2018, and Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna in 2020.