Americans Carolyn Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless, together with Denmark’s Morten Meldal, have been honoured “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.” 

“This year’s Prize in Chemistry deals with not overcomplicating matters, instead working with what is easy and simple. Functional molecules can be built even by taking a straightforward route,” Johan Åqvist, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said in a press release. 

The award marks the second Nobel for 81-year-old Sharpless, who won the chemistry Nobel in 2001 and who in around 2000 coined the concept of “click chemistry”, a form of simple and reliable chemistry, where reactions occur quickly and unwanted by-products are avoided.

On the back of Sharpless’ original idea, Morten Meldal, a professor at Copenhagen University, and Sharpless then independently came up with “copper catalysed azide-alkyne cycloaddition“,  an elegant and efficient chemical reaction that has since become the foundation of much click chemistry, used in making pharmaceuticals and analysing DNA. 

Bertozzi then took click chemistry to a new dimension and started using it in living organisms.

“She developed click reactions that work inside living organisms. Her bioorthogonal reactions take place without disrupting the normal chemistry of the cell,” the jury said.

Meldal, who was born in Denmark in 1954, got his PhD from the Technical University of Denmark.