CAROLYN BERTOZZI

CHEMIST AND MEDICAL RESEARCHER

- by Peg Lopata

To study sugar molecules in living things in the 1990s, Carolyn Bertozzi wondered if she could attach flourescent tags to them. The trick was to do so without interfering with them.

I say study chemistry wherever you can." " -Nobel Prize-winner Carolyn Bertozzi

Human bodies are like complex chemical factories. They usually work well. But sometimes, things go wrong. How does that happen? To figure out how chemicals in our bodies work—or, sometimes, how they don't—one person to turn to is Carolyn Bertozzi. She is a medical researcher and professor at Stanford University in Northern California. In 2022, she won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for devising new targeted chemical reactions in living things. These processes allow for imaging and drug targeting to help diagnose and treat patients with disease.