Stockholm – The Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday was awarded to Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan “for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced.
The body called their development “an ingenious tool for building molecules.”
“Building molecules is a difficult art,” the academy said in a news release. The duo was recognized “for their development of a precise new tool for molecular construction: organocatalysis. This has had a great impact on pharmaceutical research, and has made chemistry greener.
Ahead of the announcement, the pioneers of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, thought to be among the contenders for the medicine prize that was announced on Monday, had also been seen as contenders for chemistry. The work of Hungarian biochemist Katalin Kariko and U.S. immunologist Drew Weissman served as a basis for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. Canada’s Pieter Cullis, another mRNA expert, had been seen as a possible joint winner.
With well over 1 billion people worldwide having received a dose of vaccines based on the technology, its “benefit to humankind” is hardly in doubt. But many experts feel that it is a little too early for the generally cautious Nobel Assembly to give the nod.
Another medicine-related discovery that had been seen as a contender in chemistry is that of tissue engineering, with the American trio, Cato Laurencin, Kristi Anseth, and Robert Langer.
The latter is known for developing technologies that allow the delivery of drugs directly to diseased tissues without the use of needles or other invasive measures.
On the materials side, South Korea’s Taeghwan Hyeon, the French-Tunisian American Moungi Bawendi and Canadian Christopher Murray had been seen as contenders for their work on nanocrystals.
Japan’s Susumu Kitagawa and Makoto Fujita and American-Jordanian Omar Yaghi were also in the running, considered to be the pioneers of metal-organic frameworks which allow for the storage of large quantities of gas without requiring high pressure.
Last year, the honor went to Frenchwoman Emmanuelle Charpentier and American Jennifer Doudna for developing the gene-editing technique known as CRISPR-Cas9 — DNA snipping “scissors.”
The Nobel season continues with the two most closely watched prizes: literature on Thursday and peace on Friday. The winner of the economics prize will be announced on Monday.
The medicine prize kicked off the 2021 Nobel season on Monday, going to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for breakthroughs that paved the way for the treatment of chronic pain.
The physics prize followed Tuesday, when half was awarded to U.S.-Japanese scientist Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann for climate models, and the other half to Italy’s Giorgio Parisi for work on the theory of disordered materials and random processes.
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