Scientists David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper gained the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the award-giving physique mentioned on Wednesday (Oct 9), for his or her work on the construction of proteins.
The prize, broadly 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 (US$1.1 million).
“One of many discoveries being recognised this 12 months issues the development of spectacular proteins. The opposite is about fulfilling a 50-year-old dream: Predicting protein constructions from their amino acid sequences,” the academy mentioned in an announcement.
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 medicine 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, through the previous 12 months, 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 medication, physics, chemistry, literature and peace. Recipients in every class share the prize sum that has been adjusted over time.
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, could not at all times be probably the most headline-grabbing of the prizes, however previous recipients embrace scientific greats resembling radioactivity pioneers Ernest Rutherford and Marie Curie.
Final 12 months’s chemistry award went to Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Aleksey Ekimov for his or her discovery of tiny clusters of atoms generally known as quantum dots, broadly used right this moment to create colors in flat screens, mild emitting diode (LED) lamps and units that assist surgeons see blood vessels in tumours.
Alongside the money prize, the winners can be introduced a medal by the Swedish king on Dec. 10, adopted by a lavish banquet in Stockholm metropolis corridor.
