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Benjamin List: Breaking the Wall to Organocatalysis
Falling Walls Foundation | Benjamin List
How an Overlooked Type of Catalysis is Revolutionising Chemical Synthesis
Traditional methods of chemical synthesis are laden with hazardous chemicals and heavy metal catalysts, the disposal of which has led to environmental pollution in both land and air, while producing copious amounts of chemical waste. These inefficient methods of chemical synthesis have caused not only health and safety concerns for workers within the industry but also limited access to healthcare for essential medications due to the cost and complexity of the outdated process. Benjamin List, a German chemist who earned his degree in chemistry from the Free University of Berlin in 1993 and subsequently a doctorate from the Goethe University of Frankfurt in 1997, is changing the game in organocatalysis with his groundbreaking work, leading to his co-awarding of the 2021 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
At Falling Walls, List will dive into his success in developing a third catalysis—the asymmetric organocatalysis—carbon-based compounds that don’t require metals or metal complexes to facilitate chemical reactions, thus promoting environmental and pharmaceutical benefits.
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Benjamin List, (born January 11, 1968, Frankfurt am Main) a German chemist who was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on asymmetric organocatalysis. He shared the prize with British chemist David MacMillan. List received a degree in chemistry from the Free University of Berlin in 1993 and a doctorate in the same subject from the Goethe University of Frankfurt in 1997. That year he started a postdoctoral fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. He became an assistant professor there in 1998 and returned to Germany in 2003 to become a research group leader at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim an der Ruhr, and in 2005 he became director at the institute.
