Episode 58: Nobel Laureate Dr. Benjamin List on Organocatalysis

“That's where then the magic comes, because it means that one capitalist molecule in principle can do its job an infinite number of times. And that's also where the economic fascination comes from, because it means a small amount of something, a capitalist, can create a huge amount of something else that might be valuable.”

“my observation was when I was a postdoc at Scripps that the fascinating thing about biocatalysts, about these enzymes, is that sometimes they do have a nectar, but sometimes they don't. And chemists, in contrast, believe they would always need a metal in their catalytic molecules. And that was the starting point for this question, can we also use organic catalysts?”