Carolyn Bertozzi's career connects two forms of scientific infrastructure: chemical tools that make hidden biological activity visible, and a laboratory culture designed to help more people contribute. Her path from exclusion in chemistry labs to the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry suggests that discovery depends not only on individual ability, but also on the environments in which researchers learn, experiment and collaborate.
An Unexpected Turn Toward Chemistry
Born in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1966, Bertozzi entered Harvard in 1984 intending to study medicine. She played university soccer and performed in a band with Tom Morello, who later became known for his work with Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. Chemistry was not initially central to her plans, but an organic chemistry course changed her direction. She switched her major and began pursuing the subject that would shape her career.
That pursuit took place in an often hostile environment. Bertozzi encountered ridicule and exclusion while studying science in the 1980s, when women had limited access to some laboratories and openly gay scientists had few visible role models. She nevertheless continued into doctoral chemistry, drawn by the freedom and challenge of experimental work.
Learning Through Independence
According to the Nobel Prize account, Bertozzi felt an immediate sense of possibility when she visited the University of California, Berkeley, then an inclusive center for emerging biochemical research. In Mark Bednarski's laboratory, she began studying glycans, the complex sugars found on cell surfaces that participate in immune activity and disease. When Bednarski was diagnosed with cancer, Bertozzi had to finish her doctorate without her adviser. The disruption made publication more difficult, but it also required her to direct her own research and manage laboratory work independently.
Still fascinated by glycans, Bertozzi sought a way to observe them moving through living systems without disturbing ordinary cellular chemistry. She developed methods for attaching imaging probes to glycans and later adapted the principles of click chemistry for use inside living organisms. She called this approach bioorthogonal chemistry: reactions designed to operate in biological systems without interfering with normal processes.
Culture as Scientific Infrastructure
Bioorthogonal reactions are now used to investigate cells, follow biological processes and develop more precisely targeted medicines. Bertozzi later moved to Stanford University and founded multiple companies intended to translate these chemical tools toward clinical applications, including work related to cancer and autoimmune disease. In 2022, she shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless.
Her response to early exclusion was not simply to endure it. She made inclusion part of how she built her own laboratory, creating room for minoritized researchers to work, form relationships and exchange ideas. The broader lesson is editorial rather than universal: a laboratory's culture can be treated as working infrastructure. Instruments and methods shape what scientists can observe, while access, trust and collaboration shape who gets to ask questions and help pursue the answers.
Cover: AI-generated editorial illustration; not a documentary photograph.
Source: Nobel Prize
CAROLYN BERTOZZI
Women who changed science
SIGNAL TITANS
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