Direct report · Announcement of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021
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At 11.45 today, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences presents this year's Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.
A hot candidate is the British Barry Halliwell, who has conducted pioneering research on free radicals - molecules that in some cases can make us sick.
Another candidate is Katalin Kariko from Hungary.
She is one of the researchers behind the mRNA technology used to produce some of the vaccines against covid-19.
Solves chemical problems
A third possible winner is the American William L Jorgensen, a pioneer in the so-called computational chemistry where computer simulation is used to solve chemical problems.
Last year, the Frenchwoman Emmanuelle Charpentier and the American Jennifer Doudna were rewarded for the discovery of the so-called genetic scissors Crispr / Cas9, which makes it possible to make dramatic changes in DNA, the genome.
Sky-high favorites
The award received a lot of attention because the two researchers had been sky-high favorites for several years in a row - an effect of the fact that genetic scissors have already come into great use in a number of areas.
It will be difficult to get as much attention this year, as few researchers have star status in the same way as Charpentier and Doudna.