[3] His aunt, the 1995 Nobel laureate in medicine Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, is the sister of his mother, architect Heidi List.

[10][11] List is also a principal investigator at the Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery, Hokkaido University since 2018.

[18] In particular, while still an assistant professor he discovered the possibility of using the amino acid proline as an efficient chiral catalyst.

[18][19] This takes place in intermolecular aldol reactions, in which carbon atoms from two different molecules are bonded together, induced by proline.

[20] On 6 October 2021, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with David MacMillan "for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis.

"[2] The development has great influence on pharmaceutical research and the drug production and "made chemistry greener".