The 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry recognized Demis Hassabis, John Jumper, and David Baker for using machine learning to tackle one of biology’s biggest challenges: predicting the 3D shape of proteins and designing them from scratch.
This year’s award stood out because it honored research that originated at a tech company: DeepMind, an AI research startup that was acquired by Google in 2014. Most previous chemistry Nobel Prizes have gone to researchers in academia. Many laureates went on to form startup companies to further expand and commercialize their groundbreaking work – for instance, CRISPR gene-editing technology and quantum dots– but the research, from start to end, wasn’t done in the commercial sphere.
Although the Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry are awarded separately, there is a fascinating connection between the winning research in those fields in 2024. The physics award went to two computer scientists who laid the foundations for machine learning, while the chemistry laureates were rewarded for their use of machine learning to tackle one of biology’s biggest mysteries: how proteins fold.
The 2024 Nobel Prizes underscore both the importance of this kind of artificial intelligence and how science today often crosses traditional boundaries, blending different fields to achieve groundbreaking results.
