The Americans Carolyn Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless, as well as the Dane Morton Meldal, are the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on joining molecules – in the field known as click chemistry.
Click chemistry is a branch of science that deals with the study of how to connect different molecules into a single whole. Their work is used in cell research and the monitoring of biological processes, and it can also be applied to drugs for the treatment of cancer. The Nobel committee praised their work, which they say will make chemistry more efficient, adding that the impact of their research can be seen in science.
“With this year’s prize, we want to show that not everything has to be complicated, but that things can be made easy and simple,” says Johan Acquist, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.
The winners will share a prize of ten million Swedish kronor (about 912,000 euros). Bertocci, a pioneer in bioorthogonal chemistry, is the eighth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
“I am delighted, I can hardly breathe,” said Bertossi after being informed of the prize by the Nobel committee.
Her discoveries can be applied in medicine and pharmacology, she explained. This means that scientists can “apply chemical research to the human body by monitoring whether the drug ends up in the right place and keeps it away from where it shouldn’t.” It’s also a “biological tool” that will help scientists spot molecules they didn’t know existed, she added. Barry Sharpless won the Nobel Prize for the second time. 21 years ago, he became a Nobel laureate thanks to his work on chiral catalysts.
Sharpless and Medal worked separately, but they
The Nobel Committee last year awarded the prize to scientists for developing ways to construct molecules. Swedish physicist Svante Pabo received the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for Neanderthal DNA research.
Three scientists, French Alain Aspe, American John Clausur and Austrian Anton Zeilinger, received the Nobel Prize in Physics on October 4, for research in the field of quantum mechanics – the science that describes nature using particles smaller than atoms.
Previous winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
2021 – Benjamin List and David McMillen, awarded the Chemistry Prize for developing a new way to construct molecules.
2020 – Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won the prize for inventing tools to modify DNA.
2019 – John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino shared the prize for their work on lithium-ion batteries.
2018 – Francis Arnold, George P. Smith and Gregory Winter were awarded for the discovery of enzymes.
2017 – Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson were awarded for advancing the picture of biological molecules.
2016 – Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringa won the prize for a machine made of molecules.
2015 – Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modric and Aziz Sankar were awarded for their work on DNA repair.
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