A scientist has said he wouldn’t have won the Nobel Prize if he wasn’t Scottish – as he learned at a young age how to tell jokes and get ideas over quickly.
Prof David MacMillan said it felt “brilliant, just really fantastic” after he and German scientist Prof Benjamin List were jointly awarded the top gong in chemistry.
They were honoured for developing a new way of building molecules.
Hailing the banter of his homeland, David, 53, said: “Growing up in Scotland, you learn how to talk and tell a joke and you can get to a punchline. You can convey ideas quickly – growing up in Scotland you’re good at it.
“So we were able to convey this was a pretty interesting and valuable concept that people could use in science. It helped my career and helped the science move forward, but it wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t Scottish.”
David, who went to New Stevenston Primary School in Motherwell and Bellshill Academy, praised the “brilliant” education he got, adding: “I’m incredibly lucky to have come through that system.”
He went on to get his chemistry degree at Glasgow University before moving to the US for postgraduate studies.
David, of Princeton University in the US, said his breakthrough had been used to make medicines faster and helped with the development of drugs for Alzheimer’s, cancer and heart disease.
Asked to explain his discovery, he told BBC Radio Scotland: “Everything around you is made by chemical reactions, and how those reactions work is based on catalysis. We invented these new types of catalysis that allowed you to do things you couldn’t do before, to make new materials.”
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted her congratulations to David on his Nobel Prize, calling it “an extraordinary achievement”.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which organises the Nobel Prize awards, said: “This has had a great impact on pharmaceutical research, and has made chemistry greener.”
