Award in Stockholm
Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to three scientists for their protein research
David Baker (lr), Demis Hassabis, and John M. Jumper share the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
© Steffen Trumpf / DPA
David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They managed to predict the structure of proteins – a problem that has not yet been solved.
This year, half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to David Baker (USA) and half to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, both of whom work in Great Britain. Baker receives the prize for computational protein design, Hassabis and Jumper for predicting the complex structures of proteins. This was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.
According to the academy, Baker achieved the almost impossible: developing an entirely new type of protein. Hassabis and Jumper developed an AI model to solve a decades-old problem: predicting the complex structures of proteins. According to the Nobel Prize Committee, both discoveries hold enormous potential: the diversity of life testifies to the amazing ability of proteins as chemical tools.
“One of the discoveries being recognized this year concerns the construction of spectacular proteins. The other is about the fulfillment of a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein structures from their amino acid sequences. Both discoveries open up enormous possibilities,” said Heiner Linke, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.
Artificial proteins for medicine
Baker, born in Seattle in 1962, first created a new protein from amino acids in 2003. Since then, his working group has produced many more proteins that are used, among other things, for pharmaceuticals and vaccines, it said.
Hassabis, born in London in 1976, and Jumper, born in Little Rock, USA, in 1985, presented the AI model “AlphaFold2” in 2020, which can be used to predict the structures of practically all of the 200 million proteins known to date. The Nobel Committee writes that AI has been used by people in 190 different countries. This could help, for example, in clarifying antibiotic resistance or in using enzymes to break down plastics.
Hassabis is the head of the Google subsidiary DeepMind, which specializes in AI. Jumper is a senior scientist there. He was recently named one of the 100 most influential people in the AI world by Time Magazine.
So far, eight women have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
This year, the most prestigious award for chemists is worth a total of eleven million crowns (around 970,000 euros). Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to 192 different researchers. Two of them received it twice. So far, eight women have been awarded the prize: Marie Curie in 1911, who discovered the radioactive elements polonium and radium, and the researchers Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, who received the 2020 prize for the development of genetic scissors.
Last year, three researchers working in the USA received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery and development of so-called quantum dots. Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov have created important foundations for this area of nanotechnology.
The Nobel Prize winners for medicine were announced on Monday: The Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun are being honored for the discovery of microRNA and its role in gene regulation. Two pioneers of artificial intelligence were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday: John Hopfield (USA) and Geoffrey Hinton (Canada).
This year’s Nobel Prize winners for literature and peace will be announced on Thursday and Friday. The series ends next Monday with the so-called Nobel Prize in Economics, sponsored by the Swedish Reichsbank. The ceremonial presentation of the awards traditionally takes place on December 10th, the anniversary of the death of the prize founder Alfred Nobel.
Note: This post has been updated.