2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 5 October 2022.

The citation

The citation reads: "for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

Carolyn Bertozzi was born in 1966 in Boston, the United States, and is affiliated with Stanford University, Stanford and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Morten Meldal was born in 1954 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and is affiliated with the University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen. K. Barry Sharpless was born in 1941 in Philadelphia, the United States, and is affiliated with the Scripps Research, La Jolla.

Why it matters

Click chemistry allows molecules to be snapped together quickly and efficiently. Sharpless becomes only the fifth person to receive two Nobel Prizes.

The prize

The prize is worth 10 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.