The German scientist is doing research at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Mülheim an der Ruhr.
(Photo: dpa)
Stockholm This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to Benjamin List from Germany and US researcher David WC MacMillan, who was born in Scotland, for methods to accelerate chemical reactions. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Wednesday in Stockholm. List works at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Mülheim an der Ruhr, MacMillan at Princeton University in the USA.
The chemistry award winners of the year had developed a new and ingenious tool for the construction of molecules, the organocatalysis, it was said. It is used to research new drugs and has also contributed to making chemistry more environmentally friendly.
Organocatalysis has developed at an astonishing speed. With the help of these reactions, researchers could now manufacture many things more efficiently, from new drugs to molecules that can capture light in solar cells.
The Nobel Prizes are endowed again this year with ten million Swedish kronor (around 980,000 euros) per category. Last year, the French Emmanuelle Charpentier, who works in Berlin, and the American Jennifer A. Doudna shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. You had received an award for developing gene scissors for targeted genetic modification.
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Like the astrophysicist Reinhard Genzel in 2020, there is again a German among the Nobel Prize winners announced so far: The Hamburg meteorologist Klaus Hasselmann is sharing half of the Nobel Prize in Physics this year with the Japanese-born American Syukuro Manabe, who the other half goes to the Italian Giorgio Parisi. They are recognized for their contributions to the study of climate and other complex systems.
This year, the awards are again endowed with ten million Swedish kronor (around 980,000 euros) per category.
(Photo: AP)
Already on Monday it was announced in Stockholm that the Nobel Prize for Medicine would go to David Julius from the USA and Ardem Patapoutian, who was born in Lebanon. The two researchers discovered cell receptors through which people perceive temperatures and touch.
After medicine, physics and chemistry, the Nobel Prize announcements in the categories of literature and peace will follow on Thursday and Friday. On Monday, the Nobel Prize winners for economics will be announced at the end. The Nobel Prizes are all traditionally awarded on December 10th, the anniversary of the death of the prize donor and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896).
More: German climate researcher receives Nobel Prize in Physics