Science & technology | The 2022 Nobel prize for chemistry

The Nobel chemistry prize goes for click-together molecules

They are speeding up drug discovery, DNA sequencing and materials science

Oct 5th 2022

Chemistry is mainly about putting molecules together and pulling them apart. The details inevitably vary from reaction to reaction. But there are many areas of the subject where it would be useful to have a way of snapping the building blocks of large molecules together regardless of the chemical properties of those smaller units. And for the past two decades there has indeed been such a way. It is known as click chemistry, and its inventors are this year’s Nobel chemistry laureates.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “The Nobel chemistry prize goes for click-together molecules”