Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry to David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for their work with proteins

The prize was awarded to scientists who cracked the code of proteins. Hassabis and Jumper used artificial intelligence to predict the structure of proteins, one of the toughest problems in biology. Baker created computational tools to design novel proteins with shapes and functions that can be used in drugs, vaccines and sensors.

Until this year, the Nobel Prize for physics has typically gone to pioneers in that field, like last year’s winners who used lasers to make breakthrough discoveries about the electron. But 2024 is the year of artificial intelligence, and apparently the hype has reached even the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.