Illustration of the German chemist Benjamin List (born 1968). List received his doctorate in chemistry from Goethe University of Frankfurt in 1997 before starting a postdoctoral fellowship at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, USA. At Scripps List researched catalytic antibodies, a type of immunoglobulin that not only binds an antigen but is also able to catalyse reactions. This lead him to investigate amino acids, specifically proline, as organic (carbon-based) catalysts, developing a new type of catalysis that didn't use polluting heavy metals and could produce the desired form of a chiral molecule. In 2003 List returned to Germany to the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research, which he became director of in 2005. List was awarded a share of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his development of asymmetric organocatalysis along with David MacMillan.