Stockholm, Sweden — In a landmark announcement on Wednesday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to David Baker, Demis Hassabis, and John Jumper for their groundbreaking work in protein research. Their innovative contributions have significantly advanced the understanding and design of proteins, molecules that are fundamental to life.
"One of the discoveries being recognized 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 stated.
David Baker, a scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, received half of the award "for computational protein design." Since 2003, Baker has led efforts in creating new protein structures with diverse applications, including pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials, and tiny sensors.
The other half of the prize was jointly awarded to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google DeepMind in London "for protein structure prediction." Their development of an artificial intelligence model capable of predicting the structure of nearly all of the 200 million proteins known to science marks a monumental achievement. This breakthrough enables scientists to determine the complex three-dimensional structures of proteins based solely on their amino acid sequences.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry, considered one of the highest honors in science, comes with a monetary reward of 11 million Swedish crowns (about $1.1 million). The laureates’ work not only fulfills long-standing scientific aspirations but also opens new horizons in biology, medicine, and materials science.
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Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded to 3 scientists for work on proteins
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