David MacMillan, who shared the 2021 Chemistry Nobel Prize with Benjamin List, doesn’t see himself primarily as a chemist. He sees himself as a curious person who’s deeply interested in the world around him. “If you look around the room you’re in, everything you see—everything in the world—requires a chemical reaction,“ he says. MacMillan, 57, was at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru on 3 November for The Nobel Prize Dialogue 2025, a series of talks addressing global issues, in association with the Tata Trusts. MacMillan’s Nobel was awarded was for “the development of asymmetric organocatalysis“, in other words, designing organic molecules (common elements that make up all living things) that are non-toxic and easy-to-handle to speed up chemical reactions. This makes it cheaper and greener to carry out catalysis for everything from clothing to medication. “Organocatalysis has democratised catalysis,“ says MacMillan. “In India, it’s used in almost every lab, every company, every startup.“ Across the world, 90% of industrial-scale chemical reactions use catalysis and it is the basis of 35% of the global GDP. MacMillan, who is James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University, sat down for a chat with *Lounge *with a cup of chai “that’s super flavoursome with all the spices—more chemistry“. Edited excerpts.

I feared organic chemistry as a student, failed it repeatedly, it is the stuff of nightmares for me. What would you tell someone like 15-year-old me and help them see its beauty?

There are many like that. My 20-year-old daughter, she’s taking organic chemistry in university, and I was on a Zoom call this morning working with her on it. Her mum’s an organic chemist, I’m an organic chemist, but she has tremendous anxiety about everything to do with it. It’s a bizarre subject, very different from other subjects, but I always tell people it’s like chess. Once you learn the rules—and the rules are tricky—you learn how to play the game. The more you play the game, you become more sophisticated at it. It becomes fun when you get to put your hands on the molecules and design ways in which they will react with each other that were previously impossible.

A decade ago, I discovered books like ‘Elemental’ by Tim James, which explains the periodic table lucidly and makes it fun, and ‘A is for Arsenic’ by Kathryn Harkup, which talks chemistry through the poisons in Agatha Christie novels. They made chemistry real, showed how it touches every aspect of our lives. Then, there are shows like ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Lessons in Chemistry’. Do books and shows like these do harm or good to chemistry’s image?

After I won the Nobel Prize, I went on Scottish TV and radio, and Scottish people have a great sense of humour. I come from a working class area in Scotland (Bellshill), so they kept asking me, did I begin by “breaking bad“? Is that where I became an organic chemist? It was very funny, but it is interesting that the image we have of organic chemists is basically the drug world. There is some of that, of course, but my view is that chemists do not do a good job of explaining to the world broadly what chemistry is. It’s like a PR problem. Think about physics—physics sounds cool because of black holes and stars; biology, you think of medicine. You think of chemistry, you think of oil spills and air pollution. You don’t think of flowers and their incredible smells or life-saving medicines.

Can that perception change?

That’s why I love to tell people about catalysis, because everyone has a good feeling about catalysing new things. There is a progressive, aspirational component to it. When I talk to kids, I say, “you can invent new chemical reactions that could change the world“. In my group (at Princeton University’s Frick Chemistry Lab), literally, chemical reactions that are discovered on a Monday will be used by Friday by people in the pharmaceutical industry. That’s incredibly enabling and empowering for a young student. We scientists tend to stay in our silos; we have to learn how to be better at telling the outside world about the value of what we do … the younger generation are so much better communicators than my generation.

So chemistry is about asking the right questions. How do you teach people to ask better questions?

This is a fundamental problem that we face in science. We tend to do (research) for more funding or to publish a paper, but in society, we have such big questions we’re not addressing by asking the right questions of science. One of the very boring questions people ask me is “what will AI do for chemistry?“ AI can create questions for a chemist or a scientist. I don’t think AI will, in the short term, be able to invent new chemical reactions, but AI could come up with a conjecture, saying we have plenty of these resources, but none of that, and could you join molecules to potentially solve this problem. AI can make those recognitions in ways that humans tend not to. It can identify problems for humans to solve in chemistry, which could be really useful. The question selection is actually often more important than even the solution. Having said that, I don’t want to make a thing about AI. Chemists are creative people, and if you give them time, they’ll solve it.

There are good questions and then there’s misinformation and disinformation. What does that do to science?

It’s absolutely dismantling what we care about in science and society. The obvious example is the vaccine question. This is misinformation, or disinformation, where people are actively seeking to suggest that the science is not correct. Science is complex, and it’s only getting more complex, and we’re doing a bad job of explaining it in simple terms. When people no longer understand it, they start to dismiss it.

Then there’s the social media echo chamber, not having your news coming from credible sources the way they used. Basically, you can dial up any opinion you want, and an algorithm on social media will return your opinions back to you. It’s extremely problematic when people no longer buy into the foundations of knowledge. How do they spread the disinformation? Using smartphones to criticise science, when this phone is one of the greatest products of science. The irony!

Could this be because science’s benefits haven’t reached all, equitably?

I believe so. My father was a steel worker, my mother a maid. I was able to, through education, grow, grow, grow. Education is one of the best ways to overcome social injustice. Ignorance is very expensive, and education is the best way to raise a society. For me, education is a great social justice leveller, but it has to be available for everyone in good quality.

Chemistry has changed my life in ways I can’t even begin to understand. It’s funny because I don’t really view myself as a chemist. I view myself as a curious person who finds things interesting.

Much of the work of chemists goes to Big Pharma, which people don’t trust for reasons ranging from inflated prices to causing dependencies. How do you reconcile with this?

I’ll be honest and say that I consult for pharma. I make money from my interactions with pharma. So maybe I’m conflicted. At the same time, the scientists who work in the pharmaceutical industry are some of the most noble people you’ll meet. They sign a document, pick a salary, saying their names will go on a patent, but they will never make money from the patent. It will belong to the company, but their whole life they’ll spend trying to come up with medicines for the human race. The issue pharma runs into is the business side because their job is to optimise profits for the company and shareholders, which causes the discrepancies.

You’ve said “we’re one catalytic reaction away from solving climate change“. Could you explain that?

There’s really two, but either one would work. So, there’s not enough of any other chemical in the world to create a reaction with CO2 to remove it because there’s so much CO2 out there. The problem is coming up with a catalyst that is cheap and sustainable enough to create the reaction to reduce CO2 down to what’s called aldehydes, formyl groups or methanol. The problem is not whether it’s possible; it’s designing the right catalyst to make it possible. Every chemist knows this, but we do such a bad job at telling people that we’ve got this possibility. The other possibility is mineralisation, but that’s slower.

You set up a foundation to give away your Nobel Prize money of $500,000. Could you tell us more about that?

We put it in a charitable fund. That news went viral and lots of people started donating and it grew. So we made it an endowment fund. It’s not as enormous as the Tata Trusts, of course, but we give away between $100,000-200,000 a year in Scotland to help underprivileged kids get to university or stay in university. Giving is, without a doubt, the most soul-satisfying thing you can do. I think everybody knows that, but when you engage in it, it becomes so amazing.

Beyond awards, ceremonies and giving, what is the quiet role of chemistry in your life?

Chemistry has changed my life in ways I can’t even begin to understand. It’s funny because I don’t really view myself as a chemist. I view myself as a curious person who finds things interesting. You’ll think I’m just saying this to be nice, but walking around the flower market in Bangalore, seeing people and smelling the smells and having that experience, how incredible is that? Seeing things for the first time is so amazing. It makes me think of the kind of things I’ll be chasing for the rest of my life because the world is an inexhaustible supply of these experiences.

You’re also a girl dad. Has that had any impact on your approach to work and life?

Absolutely. They bought me a male frog, and it died. So, I couldn’t even keep a male frog alive (laughs). But no, without being dumb and weird, your sensibilities change when you’re the only male in the house. You develop empathies in ways you wouldn’t have had before. My three daughters (27, 25 and 20; a PhD in neuroscience, a lawyer, and an organic chemistry student) spend a lot of time seeing the world from each other’s viewpoint. I find that fascinating. Now, when I engage with people, I try to think about how they feel.

Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.

more