Jurados

Benjamin List (Frankfurt am Main, January 11, 1968) is a German chemist, professor at the University of Cologne, and director of the Homogeneous Catalysis Group at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research. He contributed to the development of organocatalysis, a method for accelerating chemical reactions using organic compounds and making them more efficient and sustainable. He shared the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with David MacMillan "for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis.

List graduated with a degree in chemistry in 1993 from the Free University of Berlin and subsequently obtained his doctorate in 1997 from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt.

He is a professor at the University of Cologne, as well as director and professor at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research. He is also a principal investigator at the Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery at Hokkaido University.

Social applications of his discoveries

Asymmetric organocatalysis is a process that allows substances to be obtained through faster, more economical chemical reactions, with fewer polluting reagents and, therefore, more sustainable.

It has been applied to the production of medicines so that they can be produced in larger quantities, which lowers the price.

It has the advantage of obtaining much purer compounds, reducing contaminants and less efficient forms of compounds, which is very important for the quality of the products generated, improving the effectiveness and efficiency of production, and even ensuring the safety of the ingested products.