Formal Sciences & Matter / Chemistry & Materials

Catalysis

Berzelius coins the term in 1835: substances that speed up reactions without being consumed, now part of most industrial chemistry.

Milestones include the platinum catalyst for sulfuric acid (1900s), Haber-Bosch ammonia (1913), Ziegler-Natta plastics catalysts (1950s), the car exhaust catalyst (1970s) and zeolites in oil cracking. Catalysts lower the energy a reaction needs; designing them on purpose remains one of the hardest tasks in chemistry. In 2026 the Chemistry Nobel Prize went to Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai for non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric synthesis, the selective building of one mirror-image form of a molecule.