Chemistry Nobel 2022: Carolyn R Bertozzi, Morten Meldal And K Barry Sharpless Jointly Win Award

Chemistry Nobel 2022: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless "for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry".

The Nobel laureates had worked on click chemistry and bioorthogonal reactions. Click chemistry is utilised in the development of pharmaceuticals, for mapping DNA and creating materials that are more fit for purpose, while bioorthogonal reactions have helped researchers improve the targeting of cancer pharmaceuticals.

Sharpless and Meldal have laid the foundation for click chemistry, a functional form of chemistry. In click chemistry, molecular building blocks snap together quickly and efficiently.

Bertozzi has taken click chemistry to a new dimension. She used click chemistry in living organisms. According to the Nobel Prize Organisation, Bertozzi's bioorthogonal reactions take place without disrupting the normal chemistry of the cell.

Sharpless has become the fifth individual to be awarded two Nobel Prizes, following the footsteps of Marie Curie, John Bardeen, Linus Pauling, and Frederick Sanger. 

Sharpless was also awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

History of Chemistry Nobel

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded 112 times, to 186 Nobel Prize laureates, between 1901 and 2020. Frederick Sanger is the only laureate who has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice, in 1958 and 1980. 

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan “for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis.” 

The Chemistry Nobel for 2020 was awarded jointly to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna "for the development of a method for genome editing".

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1901 was awarded to Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions".

Marie Curie, née Sklodowska, was the first woman to have received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 “in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element”.