The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded Wednesday for work that led to “an ingenious tool for building molecules.”Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless became Nobel laureates for founding and advancing the fields of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry, which has “led to a revolution in how chemists think about linking molecules together,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.“The three together have opened up new doors for us in what we can do, from pharmaceutical chemistry to materials chemistry,” and their work is already being used in manufacturing, she added.Bertozzi told reporters at the winners’ press conference over the phone that her advancements are being used “to discover new kinds of molecules we didn’t know existed,” and means scientists are “doing chemistry inside human patients to make the drugs go to the right place.”The Stanford University professor said she was told of her win in the middle of the night on the American west coast.“I’m still not entirely positive it’s real.”Double NobelSharpless, a professor of chemistry at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, meanwhile, became the fifth person ever to win two Nobels, joining a short list that includes pioneering chemists Marie Curie and Frederick Sanger.Working independently, Sharpless and Meldal, who is based at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, came up with what the Nobel committee described as the “brilliant reaction” synonymous with click chemistry, which involves a catalyzed reaction between azides and alkynes."