https://www.nature.com/articles/508186a

> Before 1940, Nobels were awarded more than 20 years after the original discovery for only about 11% of physics, 15% of chemistry and 24% of physiology or medicine prizes, respectively. Since 1985, however, such lengthy delays have featured in 60%, 52% and 45% of these awards, respectively.

See https://nautil.us/this-philosopher-helped-ensure-there-was-n... for the story.

That was one of the most fundamental scientific discoveries (well, explanation for an unexpected failure of theory to predict experiment) of all time. In particular, the idea of wave packets replacing particle and wave representations was quite helpful.

Honestly imo the coolest click chemistry application was as a two-component bonding glue for copper pieces

Once you get DNA oligos in there you can do computation, as X binds X', and Y to Y'. So you can have all sorts of complex synthetic & designed interactions using chemistry that is both seamless and doesn't interfere with normal molecular biolgy.

Once you have proteins, you can localize particular chemistries.

I'd accept:

- elucidating a new signal transduction pathway

- discovering an uncharacterized enzyme

- measuring a biochemical constant of a known molecule (Kd e.g.)

- discovering a new drug target that then gets exploited

It's not new, so if someone didn't already know about it, then they are probably unlikely to be in a position to take advantage of it, because it is already how a lot of synthesis in this field is done.