Nobel in chemistry honors ‘greener’ way to build molecules

By DAVID KEYTON, FRANK JORDANS and CHRISTINA LARSON
Associated Press

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Two scientists have won the Nobel Prize for chemistry for finding an “ingenious” and environmentally cleaner way to build molecules that can be used to make a variety of compounds, including medicines and pesticides. The work of Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan has allowed scientists to produce those molecules more cheaply, efficiently, safely — and with less hazardous waste. Making molecules requires linking individual atoms together in specific arrangements. It is a difficult and slow task. Until the beginning of the millennium, chemists had only two methods to speed up the process. That changed when List and MacMillan independently reported that small organic molecules can be used to do the same job as big enzymes and metal catalysts.