News Chemistry

An easier, greener way to build molecules wins the chemistry Nobel Prize

Chemists Benjamin List and David MacMillan developed ‘asymmetric organocatalysis’

illustration of the molecular structures of two mirror versions of limonene

Many chemical reactions produce two versions of a molecule that are mirror, or asymmetrical, images of one another, such as these illustrations of a molecule called limonene. Often, chemists want to make just one.

©Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

By Jonathan Lambert

Making molecules is hard work. Atoms must be stitched together into specific arrangements through a series of chemical reactions that are often slow, convoluted and wasteful.