Nobel in chemistry honors pair for new way to make molecules

By DAVID KEYTON and FRANK JORDANS
Associated Press

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Two scientists have won the Nobel Prize for chemistry for finding an “ingenious” new way to build molecules that can be used to make everything from medicines to food flavorings. Benjamin List of Germany and Scotland-born David W.C. MacMillan developed “asymmetric organocatalysis.” Goran Hansson of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Wednesday that work has already had a significant impact on pharmaceutical research. The judges said the tool has also made chemistry “greener.” Making molecules requires linking individual atoms together in specific arrangement. It is a difficult and slow task. Until beginning of the millennium, chemists had only two methods — or catalysts — to speed up the process. All that changed with the laureates’ work.