Sam Amico
If you’re going to win the Nobel Prize, what better way to do it than in a sweatshirt and jeans while wearing a massive smile? Danish chemist Morten Meldal also threw in a few laughs. But otherwise said little upon learning he had indeed won the Nobel Prize.
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He held his phone and nodded, as he emerged from a classroom to a small but loud cheering crowd.
As simple as it was, the video of Meldal’s reaction has gone viral. Perhaps because it speaks volumes.
Morten Meldal Receives Nobel Prize
Morten Meldal is actually a chemistry professor at the University of Copenhagen. He won the Nobel jointly with Carolyn R. Bertozzi and Karl Barry Sharpless “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.”
Winners were revealed on Oct. 5.
“This year’s Prize in Chemistry deals with not overcomplicating matters, instead working with what is easy and simple. Functional molecules can be built even by taking a straightforward route,” said Johan Aqvist, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.”
The video was released by Now This on Instagram, and it’s pretty great. “This is the heartwarming moment Danish chemist Morten Meldal found out he had won a Nobel Prize — via a round of surprise applause from his coworkers,” they wrote.
“Meldal, along with two other scientists, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday. Per the AP, his work has focused on ’developing a way of ‘snapping molecules together’ that can be used to design better medicines, including ones that target diseases such as cancer more precisely,” they captioned it.
