Sir David MacMillan won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2021 for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis, a precise new tool for molecular construction. His invention has had a great impact on pharmaceutical research, and is credited with making chemistry greener.

Sir David is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University, where he was also the chair of the Department of Chemistry from 2010 to 2015.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012, a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2013, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2018.

In 2022, he was knighted for services to chemistry and science.