K. Barry Sharpless received his B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1963 and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Stanford University in 1968. Before joining Scripps Research in 1990 as a W.M. Keck Professor of Chemistry, he was chemistry faculty at MIT and Stanford.

His 50+ year research career has been devoted to finding new tools and better general methods for exploring the chemical universe. In 2001, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on chirally catalyzed oxidation reactions for work commencing in 1980, when the first of 3 Sharpless Asymmetric Reactions was discovered. In the 1990s, he began looking for a reliable way to uncover useful chemical function. Nature provided the inspiration, and click chemistry was the result: a discovery methodology based on modular simplicity (all the molecules of life are made from less than several dozen small building blocks), guaranteed reliability, and spring-loaded, “perfect” reactions. Most recently, Barry has been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his groundbreaking research in developing “click chemistry,” making him the second scientist ever to win two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry.

Over the years, Barry has received countless awards and honors for his foundational work in the field, including the American Chemical Society Priestley Medal (2019) and the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Sir Derek Barton Gold Medal (2022).