The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced this year’s recipients of the Nobel Prizes in their respective fields of academics and sciences. This year’s chemistry winners for 2024 are DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and famed chemist John Jumper who are sharing half of the prize with David Baker, head of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington. If Hassabis’ name sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same developer and co-designer of PC games such as Theme Park and Syndicate.
Aside from being a child prodigy at chess and becoming a master of the game, Hassabis graduated from the University of Cambridge with first-class honors in Computer Science. From there, his games career started at Bullfrog Productions, designing Syndicate. At 17, he became the co-designer and lead programmer for the 1994 game Theme Park, working with the game’s designer Peter Molyneux.
While Hassabis and Jumper won the award for “protein structure prediction,” Baker’s contribution was for “computational protein design.” The latter meant engineering entirely new kinds of proteins, designed computationally to perform specific functions within pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and more in the medicinal field.
Hassabis was awarded a knighthood for ‘services to artificial intelligence’ back in March, saying he was delighted and honored to receive the title. “It’s been an incredible journey so far building DeepMind over the past 15 years, helping accelerate the field and grow the UK and global AI ecosystems,” he said at the time. “Thanks to everyone who helped make this dream possible!”
In addition to the worldwide prestige of winning the Nobel Prize, it also comes attached with a cash prize of 11 million Swedish kronor–approximately $1 million–that will be split among the trio.
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