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“The world is full of molecules, from the oxygen we breathe to the complex drugs that cure disease. Living organisms, as well as humans, are made up of simply astronomical numbers of molecules of varying complexity. In fact, all substances like plastics, perfumes, food additives, batteries, drugs are molecules. And to connect molecules, we need to connect individual atoms in a special order. This is not a very simple task. Most chemical reactions are slow, so you have to speed them up. A catalyst is a substance that promotes reactions but does not participate in them.
For about 2000 years, we only knew two forms of catalysts, but then everything changed. List and D. McMillan discovered independently of each other and informed the world that small organic molecules could be used for the same task that massive enzymes and metal catalysts had previously used. And such reactions were cheap, fast and environmentally friendly. These discoveries have become a completely new way of combining molecules. Today, this method is widely used in areas such as drug development or chemical manufacturing. It is already of great benefit to humanity, ”said Parnilla Wittung Stafshede, Professor of Biophysical Chemistry, at the award presentation.
B.List and D.MacMillan, both 53, will also each receive a gold medal and share 10 million. The monetary part of the Swedish krona bond (almost 986 thousand euros).
Born in Scotland, MacMillan is a professor at Princeton University in the United States, and List is director of the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Germany and a professor at the University of Cologne.
Before announcing this year’s winners, experts said the Chemistry Achievement Award could be awarded to a wide range of researchers.
Clarivate, a specialized institute that publishes lists of Nobel Prize-winning scholarships each year, says that more than 70 scientists, whose articles are highly cited, meet the expected criteria.
Last year, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for “rewriting the code of life”, the CRIOSPR / Cas9 gene editing technology, and it was awarded to two women: Emmanuelle Cahrpentier of France and Jennifer A. Doudna of the United States. This last option received international criticism, since at least several groups of scientists worked on different projects of the same technology, and on one of them, the Lithuanian Virginijus Šikšnys. Unfortunately, the V.Šikšnis group was not awarded.
1911 Marie Curie also won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of radium and polonium in radioactive elements. By the way, she was also the first scientist to win two Nobel Prizes: her first Nobel Prize was awarded in 1903. for studies of spontaneous (spontaneous) radiation.
If the Nobel Prize is awarded to more than one person (and this has almost always been the case in recent years), those laureates are divided equally 10 million. The award is in Swedish crowns (987 thousand euros) and the medal is presented at a solemn ceremony in Sweden, usually in December.
