Winners of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Announced

Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan Win 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry German chemist Benjamin List and Scottish-American chemist David W.C. MacMillan have won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. At a press conference held at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, it was announced that List and MacMillan were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing "organocatalysis," a new and efficient tool for molecule building. It was noted that this tool developed by the two scientists has had a major impact on pharmaceutical research and has made chemistry more "environmentally friendly". The prize was awarded in 2020 to French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier and American biochemist Jennifer A. Doudna "for contributions to the development of 'CRISPR/Cas9' system that enables cutting and reassembling DNA strands." The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was the first to be shared among female laureates. Five women had been awarded the prize before Charpentier and Doudna. Marie Curie won in 1911, her daughter Irene Joliot-Curie in 1935, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin in 1964, Ada Yonath in 2009, and Frances H. Arnold in 2018. Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded annually to individuals who have made significant contributions to humanity in the field of chemistry. In 2015, Turkish scientist Aziz Sancar won the prize. Sancar became "the first Turkish scientist to win the Nobel Prize."