Nobel Prize "for his work on chirally catalysed oxidation reactions".

Many products of interest to the pharmaceutical industry and technology exist in two mirror forms, in the same way that our hands come in (left and right) pairs. In many cases each of these has different properties. It is often difficult to produce each of these mirror forms independently of one another.

Sharpless was a pioneer in the development of efficient methods based on catalysis in order to access only one form of the mirror pair. Apart from the conceptual importance, these methods of "asymmetric" catalysis where key to the development of industrial processes, of the preparation of pharmaceuticals, of perfumes and other products efficiently and with less pollution.