LONDON — Demis Hassabis, Co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs, and Dr. John Jumper, Director at Google DeepMind, have been jointly awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their pioneering work on AlphaFold, an AI system capable of accurately predicting the three-dimensional structure of proteins from their amino acid sequences. They share the honor with David Baker, recognized for his contributions to computational protein design.
Before the advent of AlphaFold, predicting protein structures was a highly intricate and time-consuming endeavor. The system’s groundbreaking capabilities, freely accessible through the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database, have empowered over two million scientists across 190 countries, facilitating new discoveries in fields like drug design and enzyme engineering. The 2021 publication detailing AlphaFold 2 has become one of the most-cited scientific papers, reflecting its profound impact on the scientific community.
AlphaFold’s achievements have garnered widespread acclaim and numerous prestigious awards, including the 2023 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Canada Gairdner International Award, the 2024 Clarivate Citation Laureate award, and the Keio Medical Science Prize.
The Nobel Prize highlights how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing scientific research, with AlphaFold serving as a key example of AI’s potential to accelerate progress in areas such as modeling complex systems, drug discovery, and biological research. As AI becomes increasingly integrated into scientific practices, experts anticipate more groundbreaking discoveries in the years to come.
Upon receiving the news of the Nobel Prize, Demis Hassabis expressed his gratitude: “This is the honor of a lifetime. I want to thank the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, John Jumper, the AlphaFold team, and my colleagues at DeepMind and Google. AlphaFold has already aided more than two million researchers in their vital work, and I hope this achievement is seen as the first proof point of AI’s transformative potential in science.”
John Jumper also shared his appreciation, stating: “It is an extraordinary honor to be recognized by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. AlphaFold represents a crucial step in fulfilling the promise of computational biology to illuminate the protein universe and assist experimental biologists. This award acknowledges the exceptional efforts of the Google DeepMind team, and it reaffirms that AI can greatly accelerate our understanding of diseases and the development of new therapeutics.”
Both Hassabis and Jumper emphasized the collaborative nature of their work and the critical role their teams played in the development of AlphaFold. They also expressed excitement for the future discoveries that AI will continue to unlock in the scientific field.
