JNS: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Wednesday that the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to David Baker, Demis Hassabis, and John M. Jumper for their groundbreaking contributions to the field of protein science.
The prize will be divided into two parts: one half awarded to David Baker for his pioneering research in computational protein design, and the other half jointly given to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for their innovative work in protein structure prediction.
In a press release, the Nobel Prize committee highlighted the significance of their achievements, stating, “The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 is about proteins, life’s ingenious chemical tools. David Baker has succeeded in the remarkable feat of creating entirely new kinds of proteins. Demis Hassabis and John Jumper have developed an AI model to tackle a 50-year-old challenge: predicting the complex structures of proteins. These discoveries hold enormous potential.”
Since its inception in 1901, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded 116 times to a total of 197 laureates. Notably, Frederick Sanger and Barry Sharpless are the only recipients to have won the prize twice, bringing the total number of individuals honored in this category to 195.
