Scientists David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper gained the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the award-giving physique mentioned on Wednesday, for his or her work on the construction of proteins.
The prize, extensively considered among the many most prestigious within the scientific world, is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and is value 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million).
“One of many discoveries being recognised this yr considerations the development of spectacular proteins. The opposite is about fulfilling a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein buildings from their amino acid sequences,” the academy mentioned in a press release.
Half the prize was awarded to Baker “for computational protein design” whereas the opposite half was shared by Hassabis and Jumper “for protein construction prediction”, the academy mentioned.
The third award to be handed out yearly, the chemistry prize follows these for drugs and physics introduced earlier this week.
The Nobel prizes had been established within the will of dynamite inventor and rich businessman Alfred Nobel and are awarded to “those that, in the course of the previous yr, shall have conferred the best profit to humankind”.
First handed out in 1901, 15 years after Nobel’s demise, it’s awarded for achievements in drugs, physics, chemistry, literature and peace. Recipients in every class share the prize sum that has been adjusted through the years.
The economics prize is a later addition funded by the Swedish central financial institution.
Chemistry, near Alfred Nobel’s coronary heart and the self-discipline most relevant to his personal work as an inventor, might not all the time be essentially the most headline-grabbing of the prizes, however previous recipients embody scientific greats similar to radioactivity pioneers Ernest Rutherford and Marie Curie.
Final yr’s chemistry award went to Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Aleksey Ekimov for his or her discovery of tiny clusters of atoms often known as quantum dots, extensively used at the moment to create colors in flat screens, gentle emitting diode (LED) lamps and gadgets that assist surgeons see blood vessels in tumours.
Alongside the money prize, the winners will probably be offered a medal by the Swedish king on Dec. 10, adopted by a lavish banquet in Stockholm metropolis corridor.
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