07/03/2023
”I did not think about chemistry. In high school I did not like chemistry. In the United States, when you tell someone you are a chemist like half of the time the response you get is ’Oh, I hated chemistry in high school.’ This is a common response in the United States and it is a common joke between chemists that everybody hated chemistry in high school. But I actually did hate chemistry in high school. I really didn’t think about it until college and then I discovered it accidentally really.”
When students at Thorildsplan high school in Stockholm, Sweden, asked chemistry laureate Carolyn Bertozzi about her scientific path, she told them about her initial dislike of the subject.
Today she is a chemist that took click chemistry into living cells. She developed bioorthogonal reactions which take place inside living organisms without disrupting the normal chemistry of the cell. These reactions are now used to explore cells, track biological processes, and improve the targeting of cancer pharmaceuticals.
For this she was awarded the 2022 chemistry prize.
Read more: https://bit.ly/3SJanZ4
