The Nobel Chemistry Prize has gone to three people who showed ways to more functional chemistry.
Americans Carolyn Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless with Denmark's Morten Meldal won "for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry."
It was a second Nobel for 81-year-old Sharpless, who won the prize in 2001.
Click chemistry "is an elegant and efficient chemical reaction now in widespread use," the jury noted. "It is utilized in the development of pharmaceuticals, for mapping DNA and creating materials more fit for purpose."
Sharpless, a professor at Scripps Research in California, coined the concept of click chemistry around 2000.
University of Copenhagen professor Meldal and Sharpless separately presented what is now the crown jewel of click chemistry: the copper catalyzed azide alkyne cycloaddition
Bertozzi, a professor at Stanford, then developed click reactions that work inside living organisms.
