ACS president comments on award of 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9, 2024 — On behalf of the American Chemical Society (ACS), President Mary K. Carroll congratulates today’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry: David Baker, of the University of Washington; Demis Hassabis, of Google DeepMind; and John M. Jumper, of Google DeepMind. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the prize with one half to Baker “for computational protein design” and the other half jointly to Hassabis and Jumper “for protein structure prediction.”

“This incredibly complex problem of predicting the 3D structures of proteins from the sequence of amino acids has been one of the biggest challenges in chemistry. We care about this because structure determines function — that’s one of the fundamental tenets of chemistry. The ability to design new proteins goes hand in hand with predicting the structure of proteins,” says Carroll. “The wonderful complexity of proteins has made these formidable tasks, and the solutions have relied on the power of neural networks and sophisticated computational work combined with fundamental knowledge of the underlying chemistry.”

Baker is the winner of the 2014 David Perlman Memorial Award, presented by ACS’ Division of Biochemical Technology. His talk on “The Coming of Age of De Novo Protein Design” is featured in the ACS Publications webinar “Grand Challenges in Bio & Medicinal Chemistry Frontiers in Carbohydrate and Protein Chemistry.” Baker gave a plenary talk on “Post-Evolutionary Biology: Design of Novel Protein Structures, Functions and Assemblies” at ACS Spring 2016.

Jumper is a part of the ACS member community and gave a plenary talk on “Expanding the Role of Machine Learning in Chemistry” at ACS Fall 2023.

Baker and Jumper have published articles in some of ACS’ more than 80 peer-reviewed journals. Baker, Hassabis and Jumper have appeared in news articles on the work in Chemical & Engineering News, ACS’ weekly newsmagazine. Articles are available upon request.

News media can arrange interviews with Carroll or other experts in the field by contacting the ACS newsroom. In addition, ACS will post a special Headline Science short video about the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

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The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, e-books and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio. 

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