Scientists David Baker, Demis Hassabis, and John Jumper were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for their groundbreaking research on proteins.
Baker works at the University of Washington in Seattle, while Hassabis and Jumper both work at Google Deepmind in London.
Hans Ellegren, secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that decides on the winner, announced the prize.
Baker designed a new protein in 2003 and his research group has since produced one imaginative protein creation after another, including proteins that can be used as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors, the Nobel committee said.
Hassabis and Jumper created an artificial intelligence model that has been able to predict the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have identified, the committee added.
Last year, the chemistry award went to three scientists for their work on quantum dots – tiny particles just a few nanometers in diameter that can release very bright colored light and whose applications in everyday life include electronics and medical imaging.
Six days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize. Two founding fathers of machine learning – John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton – won the physics prize on Tuesday.
The awards continue with the literature prize on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Oct. 14.
The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the award’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.
