The prestigious Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the year 2022 was awarded to Carolyn R Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K Barry Sharpless jointly on Wednesday, 5 October, “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.”
"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. Carolyn Bertozzi has taken click chemistry to a new dimension and started utilising it in living organisms," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.
Sharpless has won a Nobel prize for the second time, only the fifth individual to achieve such a feat. He had won the chemistry Nobel in 2001 as well.
The 2021 chemistry prize was awarded to two researchers — Benjamin List of Germany and Scotland-born David WC MacMillan — for their research into a greener, cleaner way to make molecules.
More About the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded 114 times to 191 individuals. The award was not conferred on eight occasions, amidst the two world wars, in 1916, 1917, 1919, 1924, 1933, 1940, 1941 and 1942.
In the statutes of the Nobel Foundation it says, “If none of the works under consideration is found to be of the importance indicated in the first paragraph, the prize money shall be reserved until the following year. If, even then, the prize cannot be awarded, the amount shall be added to the Foundation’s restricted funds.”
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