Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024: Baker, Hassabis, Jumper awarded for work on proteins
David Baker has succeeded with the almost impossible feat of building entirely new kinds of proteins
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 winners. From left: David Baker, Demis Hassabis, and John Jumper. Illustration: X / @NobelPrize
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Wednesday (October 9) announced that it has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 to three scientists.
One half of the award will be given to David Baker “for computational protein design” and the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper “for protein structure prediction”.
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“The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 is about proteins, life’s ingenious chemical tools. David Baker has succeeded with the almost impossible feat of building entirely new kinds of proteins. Demis Hassabis and John Jumper have developed an AI model to solve a 50-year-old problem: predicting proteins’ complex structures. These discoveries hold enormous potential,” the Nobel Foundation said in a press release.
The diversity of life testifies to proteins’ amazing capacity as chemical tools. They control and drive all the chemical reactions that together are the basis of life. Proteins also function as hormones, signal substances, antibodies and the building blocks of different tissues, it added.
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“One of the discoveries being recognised this year concerns the construction of spectacular proteins. The other is about fulfilling a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein structures from their amino acid sequences. Both of these discoveries open up vast possibilities,” says Heiner Linke, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.
About the winners
David Baker, born 1962 in Seattle, USA. PhD 1989 from University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Professor at University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
Demis Hassabis, born 1976 in London, UK. PhD 2009 from University College London, UK. CEO of Google DeepMind, London, UK.
John M. Jumper, born 1985 in Little Rock, AR, USA. PhD 2017 from University of Chicago, IL, USA. Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, London, UK.