Three scientists win Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on proteins

Scientists David Baker, John Jumper and Demis Hassabis have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on predicting the structure of proteins using artificial intelligence. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Wednesday announced one half of the prize to Baker "for computational protein design" and the other half jointly to Hassabis and Jumper "for protein structure prediction". Baker works at the University of Washington in Seattle, in the United States, while Hassabis and Jumper both work at Google Deepmind in London. The laureates revealed proteins' secrets through computing and artificial intelligence, the academy said, noting that "chemists have long dreamed of fully understanding and mastering the chemical tools of life – proteins". While Hassabis and Jumper used artificial intelligence "to predict the structure of almost all known proteins", Baker "has learned how to master life's building blocks and create entirely new proteins".