Demis Hassabis, David Baker and Daphne Jumper win Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on protein structure

Demis Hassabis, John Jumper, and David Baker have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on proteins, the building blocks of life. They were awarded the prize for their research in computational protein design and protein structure prediction. Baker was awarded half of the prize for his work on computational protein design, while Hassabis and Jumper shared the other half for their contributions to protein structure prediction. This breakthrough research has allowed scientists to predict the three-dimensional structure of proteins, which is a crucial step in creating new pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials, and tiny sensors. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences recognized the significance of their work, stating that it was considered impossible for years to predict the structures of proteins.