The Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to the discoverers of the third type of catalysts

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2021 was awarded to Benjamin List (Germany) and David MacMillan (USA) for the discovery and development of a new type of catalysts that dramatically increased the efficiency - and therefore the environmental friendliness - of synthesis chemistry, and especially biochemical industries and pharmaceuticals.

The press release of the Nobel Committee figuratively likens the work of the laureates to the most important step forward from the "Stone Age" of chemistry. “Before, the “hammers and chisels” in the arsenal of chemists were blunt and unreliable, and the attempt to copy works of nature led to a pile of unnecessary waste,” writes the committee.

Thanks to the work of the laureates, humanity has asymmetric organocatalysis - in fact, the third type of catalysts, in addition to the known centuries of metals and millennia - enzymes. The significance of the discovery is that new catalysts make it possible to selectively stimulate reactions of the desired chirality, that is, to immediately obtain the desired molecules, and not often undesirable symmetrical ones. In addition, new type of catalysts are cheap and environmentally friendly, representing a set of active groups on a framework of carbon atoms, without heavy metal atoms.

List wondered if the highly complex architecture of natural enzymes was necessary for catalysis, and by the early 2000s he came to a breakthrough conclusion: no, it is not necessary. It turned out that simple amino acids, in particular proline, can perform the same functions under certain conditions. Around the same time, Macmillan approached the creation of organic catalytic structures that work like metals, but in an aqueous medium, and most importantly, realized their potential and universal nature. He also introduced the term "organocatalysis".

Since the turn of the century, the field has been growing at a frantic pace, "similar to the era of the gold rush," and List and Macmillan remain at the forefront of research, the committee notes. In a number of cases, it was possible to create cheap and stable catalysts, due to which the reaction “jumps over” several stages of traditional synthesis at once. So, the synthesis of strychnine, which serves as a kind of benchmark in organic chemistry, was made 7 thousand times more efficient and half of the stages were removed from it.

The biggest gift of selective organic catalysts has been for pharmacists, who often only need to isolate one isomer of an active ingredient from many. What a miscalculation in this process leads to is clearly shown by the tragedy with thalidomide , a sleeping pill that caused severe defects in newborns. Already in this century, a new method has given drugs such as the antidepressant paroxetine and the antiviral oseltamivir.

awarded The Nobel prize in physics the day before also has an environmental impact. It was given to the scientists who made reliable climate modeling possible and the first evidence of the anthropogenic nature of global warming.