Meet Karl Barry Sharpless, the second person in history to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice.

The recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was revealed on Wednesday by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

For the creation of click chemistry and bio-orthogonal chemistry, Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal, and Karl Barry Sharpless received the prestigious award.

Morten Meldal and Carolyn R. Bertozzi are the only recipients of the Nobel Prize who have never received the award before, but Karl Barry Sharpless has already received it once in his career. His most recent Nobel Prize was awarded to him in 2001 for research on chirally catalysed oxidation processes.

The 2022 Chemistry prize was given to the three chemists for laying the foundation for a functional form of chemistry, click chemistry, and utilising it in living organisms.

‘This year’s Prize in Chemistry deals with not overcomplicating matters, instead of working with what is easy and simple. Functional molecules can be built even by taking a straightforward route,’ Johan Aqvist, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said in the announcement.

American chemist Karl Barry Sharpless works with the Scripps Research Department of Chemistry. He received the 2022 Nobel Prize for research that dates back to when he first introduced the idea of ‘click chemistry,’ a type of straightforward chemistry in which undesirable byproducts are avoided and reactions take place rapidly.