The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022 awarded to 2022 to Carolyn R. Bertozzi (USA), Morten Meldal (Denmark) and K. Barry Sharpless (USA).
Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal have laid the foundation for a functional form of chemistry – click chemistry – in which molecular building blocks snap together quickly and efficiently.
Barry Sharpless, who is now being awarded his second Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was the one who started the snowball rolling. Around the turn of the century, he coined the concept of click chemistry for a functional form of chemistry, where molecular building blocks snap together quickly and efficiently.
The snowball became an avalanche when Morten Meldal and Barry Sharpless – independently of each other – discovered what has become the crown jewel of click chemistry: the copper catalysed azide-alkyne cycloaddition.
Carolyn Bertozzi, who took click chemistry to a new dimension and began using it to map cells. Her bioorthogonal reactions are now contributing to more targeted cancer treatments, among many other applications.
Barry Sharpless has just become the fifth individual to be awarded two Nobel Prizes (he won in 2001). He follows in the footsteps of double Nobel Prize laureates John Bardeen, Marie Skłodowska Curie, Linus Pauling and Frederick Sanger.
