British computer scientist Demis Hassabis has won a share of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for “revolutionary” work on proteins, the building blocks of life.
Mr Hassabis, 48, co-founded the artificial intelligence company that became Google DeepMind.
Professor John Jumper, who worked with Mr Hassabis on the breakthrough, shares the award along with US-based Professor David Baker.
Proteins are the building blocks of life and are found in every cell in the human body.
Better understanding proteins has driven huge breakthroughs in medicine.
Mr Hassabis and Prof Jumper used artificial intelligence to predict the structures of almost all known proteins and created a tool called AlphaFold2.
The committee called it a “complete revolution” in chemistry, and the tool is now used for 200 million proteins worldwide.
Professor Baker used amino acids to design a new protein, opening the door to the creation of new proteins used in pharmaceuticals, vaccines and other tools.
Prof Baker told the committee shortly after the announcement that he was “very excited and very honoured”.
“I stood on the shoulders of giants,” he said, when asked how he had cracked the code of creating proteins.
He said he was sleeping when the phone rang, and when the announcement was made, his wife “starting screaming very loudly” in excitement.
The announcement was made by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences at a press conference in Stockholm, Sweden.
The winners share a prize fund worth 11m Swedish kronor (£810,000). Prof Baker will receive half of the award, with the remaining half going to Mr Hassabis and Mr Jumper.
