Morten Meldal‘s Nobel Prize win was marked with celebrations at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. A video posted on social media shows the new Nobel laureate walking out of his room while students and staff at the institution stood outside applauding.

Meldal was seen carrying his phone outside. As tradition goes, the secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences calls the Nobel prize winners to inform that they will receive the award. Hans Ellegren made the call on Wednesday.

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See the video here: 

Meldal said he received a call from the Nobel panel about half an hour before the public announcement.

“They (…) told me not to tell anyone. So I sat inside my office and I shook my pants with fright,” he told The Associated Press. “This is a huge honor.”

Meldal started out as an engineer. “But I wanted to understand the world so I thought chemistry would give me the solutions,” he told the AP.

Morten Meldal won the prize “or the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry”, the Nobel Prize Committee said. The award has been split three ways, with Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless taking 1/3 each.

Meldal was credited with laying the foundation for a functional form of chemistry in which molecular building blocks snap together quickly and efficiently.

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Meldal, 68, based at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Sharpless, who is affiliated with Scripps Research, California, independently found the first such candidates that would easily snap together with each other but not with other molecules, leading to applications in the manufacture of medicines and polymers.

The awards continue with literature on Thursday. The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on Monday.