Conversation: clicking chemistry

During the evening, Nobel laureate Morten Meldal talks about his groundbreaking discovery, new materials that contribute to a more sustainable world, and what it is like to work as a researcher at brewing company Carlsberg.

Meldal was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry”. Click chemistry is a method that simplifies complex chemistry. Thanks to this approach, researchers can develop new materials and pharmaceuticals, and make chemical reactions cleaner and more efficient.

Gustav Källstrand from the Nobel Prize Museum moderates the conversation, which is also recorded for the podcast Idéer som förändrar världen.

About click chemistry

Chemists strive to build increasingly complicated molecules. For a long time, this has been very time consuming and expensive. Click chemistry means that molecular building blocks snap together quickly and efficiently.

In 2002, Nobel Prize laureates Morten Meldal and Barry Sharpless, independently of each other, developed an elegant and efficient chemical reaction: the copper catalysed azide-alkyne cycloaddition. This is now in widespread use and is utilised in the development of pharmaceuticals, for mapping DNA and creating new materials.