The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Wednesday three scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for “the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.”

The prize and its $900,000 award went equally to Carolyn Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless of the United States and Morten Meldal of Denmark.

For Sharpless, it is his second Nobel Prize in chemistry after being awarded the honor in 2001.

The academy said Meldal and Sharpless each independently presented a chemical reaction that is now used widely to develop pharmaceuticals and materials, and for mapping DNA.

Bertozzi developed the field further with reactions that function inside living things, the academy said, with applications that include exploring cells and tracking biological processes.

The Nobel Prize for medicine and for physics were awarded earlier this week, with the literature prize and the Nobel Peace Prize due to be announced Thursday and Friday.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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