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Morten Meldal
born 1954 · Denmark · Contemporary
Nobel Chemistry 2022
Danish chemist at the University of Copenhagen; developed peptide and click chemistry methods that changed synthesis.
Nobel Prize work
Meldal reported the copper-catalysed azide–alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC), a fast, reliable reaction that snaps molecular building blocks together — the cornerstone of click chemistry. Independently of Sharpless’s team, his work enabled bioorthogonal chemistry that functions inside living cells, recognised by the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry shared with Barry Sharpless and Carolyn Bertozzi.
Fields
Related topics
Bioorthogonal reactions
Bioorthogonal chemistry uses selective reactions that proceed in biological settings without materially perturbing native biochemistry.
Dynamic covalent chemistry
Study reversible covalent bond formation and cleavage under equilibrium control, enabling error-correcting synthesis, adaptive molecular libraries, and selection of structures by thermodynamic or templated stabilization.