Pat Kane: Nobel Prize winner shows us what Scots excellence in science looks like

“My dad was a steelworker and my mum was a careworker”, David related to an excited auditorium at Princeton University, who support his groundbreaking labs.

In another interview with Radio Scotland, David claimed his discovery “wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t Scottish… Growing up in Scotland” – indeed, in New Stephenston, near Bellshill – “you learn how to convey ideas quickly, how get to the punchline”. A skill that helped him gain support for research into asymmetric organocatalysis, which won him his accolade.

We’ll get to asymmetric organocatalysis in a few pars. But if, like me, you remember the large-anoraked science galoots that tramped around Glasgow University’s campus in the 80s and 90s, then you will also happily recognise Professor Macmillan.

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He has announced he might celebrate with a week in Vegas, joined by poker players from his research team. He has also recalled wandering round the soccer bars of New York during this summer’s Euros, proudly sporting his Scotland top. At the Princeton event, when asked as to the origin of his Nobel-worthy discovery – which opens up many new kinds of chemical catalysis by means of organic microbes, rather than through toxic metals or elaborate enzymes – Macmillan’s explanation could have been delivered at the bar.

“When I was at Harvard, I’d have to roll in each day, and put my hands in a [protective] glove box, dealing with these toxic metals. It eventually blew my mind… Nature does catalysis all the time, it doesn’t need a glove box. So how could we do catalysis with items you’d have in your [laboratory] storeroom?”

And when asked why he took up chemistry – his wife frantically trying to shush him in the wings – David explains that his first Physics class in Glasgow University was “eight in the morning, in a freezing cold room with the rain coming in… and chemistry was at ten with the heating on. That was it”.

Of course, that’s far, far from it. But it’s been great fun to see that classic Scottish mix – supreme technical achievement and droll self-deprecation – being given its world spotlight.

Indeed, the Scotophilia goes all the way down at Princeton. The chair at Macmillan’s department, Tom Muir, is a compatriot, and described this a “fantastic day for Scottish chemistry” on the campus website.

When I mailed my Scottish contact at Princeton – Willie Storrar, director of the Centre for Theological Inquiry there – he reminded me that “Princeton University began as the Presbyterian College of New Jersey, and its two greatest Presidents in the 18th and 19th centuries were Scots, John Witherspoon and James McCosh respectively”.

​READ MORE: David WC MacMillan says Nobel Prize success wouldn't have happened if he wasn't Scottish

Willie continues: “The great Scottish theologian of religion and science Tom Torrance also went to Bellshill Academy, like MacMillan. And Tom was the friend and advisor of the founder of my Centre in Princeton. established to foster the dialogue between theology, philosophy, and science.”

Willie doesn’t know David, but he does know his Princeton colleague Angus Deaton, the Nobel-prize winning economist who mapped “deaths of despair” in America. Deaton publicly proclaims his Scottish roots.

And so it was an extraordinary moment in the Princeton press conference, when the Nobel Laureate Deaton raised his hand to ask Nobel Laureate MacMillan about the effect of the Scottish primary and secondary education they had shared.

Fascinatingly, Deaton wondered firstly if there had been a decline in quality since his experience. But secondly, correcting himself, he acknowledged that MacMillan was manifest proof that the following generation had been as well-served as he.

Macmillan enthusiastically agreed. “The teachers at Bellshill Academy didn’t have to teach us as well as they did. But they decided to…We’re a terribly wee nation, and we can’t be proud of that much, certainly not our football. But our education, yes.”

Two contending thoughts arise from this pawky exchange, at the heart of a global event. One is that it’s a pair of emigre and diaspora Scots indulging in rosy, even sentimental memories of their education, generously casting their own singular brilliance upon our mediocre past.

The other thought occasions an intake of breath. At the peak of their intellectual and scholarly professions, bathing in world acclaim, both of these men want to tell the world of the centrality of quality education to their small country. If the democratic intellect of Scottish education is a myth, then it’s a damned enduring one. Doesn’t this indicate how much of a soft-power resource this is for independence – even if we need to better substantiate it?

The leading scientific journal Nature gives the best account of the elegant force of MacMillan’s discovery (which was separately proven by the German coal chemist Benjamin List, who shares the prize). Catalysis enables the controlled reactions of chemicals, which helps in everything from medicines to solar panels. The materials required – enzymes and metals – both pollute and lack precision. MacMillan found a way for simple organic molecules to do the job, in a room-temperature and non-toxic way.

The Nature piece talks hauntingly of right- and left-hand molecules, the mysterious asymmetry (or “chirality”) of the universe, which these discoveries open up. MacMillan is now using light sources to trigger his catalysis; that’s part of a Scots scientific lineage all the way back to Clerk Maxwell.

There is a last element to the character display of Professor Macmillan this week which is worth noting: his entrepreneurship. When asked about the excitement of his profession at the press event, he says it’s because “we can find something in my lab on a Tuesday, and it’s applied in the real world on a Friday”. For Macmillan, that has meant “building a bridge” between Big Pharma (Merck, Pfizer, etc) and the “fundamental research” at Princeton (indeed, he is the Merck professor there).

MacMillan is manifestly a salesman. He told the distinguished Princeton scholars a well-polished story: a corporate client used organocatalysis to create something called the “bloom” molecule for shower gels – a substance that gives your body an intense tingle.

“I guarantee that this product is going to be used by all of your graduate students by next year”, said the corporate. “You don’t know my graduate students”, was Macmillan’s stand-up reply.

​READ MORE: Bellshill-born scientist is latest Scot to be awarded Nobel Prize

A mild pause in the celebrations. Can I entirely go along with MacMillan’s version of primary research being quickly turned into corporate application, as always a form of “helping humanity”? I can’t really. There’s also other stuff we must flag about the scientific Nobels. Only white people have ever been awarded in chemistry, physics or medicine (and, in the last, only 12 women have out of 200 awards). 

The heroism of the results often masks the immense collaborations among thousands that are often required for significant breakthroughs. Though MacMillan, as by now you might expect, has a winning answer on his relationship to his research team. “I’m a bit like the Queen as the head of the country. That doesn’t mean I know how to run the place”.

Too modest, for sure. But in general, I have very much enjoyed this Glasgow University graduate, who uses “gony” and “shouldny” between his Americanised rrr’s, as if he was still blethering at Bellshill station. In a creaky moment for national progress, he shows us all what Scottish excellence, in character and science, can look like.