By William Scott
The work of IUPUI Chancellors Professor Dr. Martin O’Donnell was recently recognized by 2021 Chemistry Nobel Laureate Dr. David MacMillan.
In his Nobel acceptance presentation “Asymmetric organocatalysis: Democratizing catalysis for a sustainable world,” Dr. MacMillan stopped to acknowledge the key contributions others had made to the field. “I don’t want to give you the impression we were the only ones doing this” he said, “in fact, for some of these things we weren’t even the first ones to do it.” As an example, Dr. MacMillan pointed to Marty’s work in the phase-transfer catalyzed enantioselective synthesis of natural and unnatural amino acids. His reference to Marty’s research is a reminder of the impact ground breaking work at IUPUI can have on major future discoveries.