The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry rewards two Americans and a Dane for the development of “click chemistry”

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Americans Carolyn Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless and Dane Morten Meldal “for the development of ‘click chemistry’ and bioorthogonal chemistry”, announced Wednesday, October 5 the Royal Academy of Sciences. “Click” chemistry makes it possible to “clip” molecules together like assembling a press stud.

American Barry Sharpless, who introduced this concept in the early 2000s to rapidly synthesize products, becomes the fifth person to win a second Nobel.

Last year, the prize awarded by the Swedish Academy was awarded to the German Benjamin List and the Briton David MacMillan for having developed a new tool for constructing molecules, “asymmetric organocatalysis”.

The previous year, in 2020, two women, the French Emmanuelle Charpentier and the American Jennifer Doudna, had been distinguished for the “molecular scissors”.