Google Deepmind CEO Hassabis among 3 winners of Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 was awarded in two parts: one to David Baker, and the other jointly to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, for their contributions to decoding the protein structure

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the annual Nobel Prizes, announced on Wednesday that the prestigious award in the field of Chemistry has been split between David Baker for his contributions to computational protein design and jointly to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper for their work in protein structure prediction.

“The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 is about proteins, life’s ingenious chemical tools,” the academy said in a statement, while announcing the winners for 2024.

The committee said that Baker had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for achieving the feat of designing entirely new types of proteins. Meanwhile, Hassabis and Jumper were recognised for their breakthrough in creating an advanced artificial intelligence model that accurately predicts the intricate structures of proteins. Their model can predict the structure of almost all known proteins.

Hassabis and Jumper’s AI model, which is known as AlphaFold2, can be used to predict the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins. Since its creation, the model has been used by over two million people from 190 countries, the academy said.

About the winners:

Baker, born in 1962 in Washington’s Seattle, is currently a professor at the University of Washington. He earned his PhD in 1989 from the University of California, Berkeley and his discovery has innovative applications in various scientific fields.

Hassabis, born in 1976 in London, United Kingdom, is the CEO of Google DeepMind. He got his PhD in 2009 from University College London and leads the AI research at Google DeepMind.

Jumper, born in 1985, is a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind in London. He earned his PhD in 2017 from the University of Chicago.

In addition to the prestigious recognition, the three winners will receive a prize of 11 million Swedish kronor, divided into two parts: Half awarded to Baker and the other half jointly to Hassabis and Jumper.