Nobel Prize for chemistry awarded to Baker, Hassabis, Jumper for protein structure work

US scientists David Baker and John Jumper and Britain’s Demis Hassabis won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the award-giving body said on Wednesday, for their work on understanding the structure of proteins.

Half the prize was awarded to Baker “for computational protein design” while the other half was shared by Hassabis and Jumper “for protein structure prediction”, said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which makes the award.

Baker is a professor at the University of Washington, in Seattle, while Hassabis is CEO of Google DeepMind, the AI research subsidiary of Google, where Jumper also works as senior research scientist.

Hassabis and Jumper utilised artificial intelligence to predict the structure of almost all known proteins, while Baker learned how to master life’s building blocks and create entirely new proteins, the award-giving body said.

“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,” the academy said in a statement.

The prize, widely regarded as among the most prestigious in the scientific world, is worth 11 million Swedish crowns (US$1.1 million).