Nobel Prize in Chemistry for protein design and AlphaFold
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded half to David Baker for computational protein design and half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google DeepMind for protein structure prediction with AlphaFold.
Key facts
- Announced 9 October 2024
- Half to David Baker (University of Washington) 'for computational protein design'
- Half to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper 'for protein structure prediction'
- First Nobel Prize awarded for an AI system's scientific achievement
Science result
- Field
- biology / structural biology / protein design
- Problem
- Protein structure prediction and computational protein design
- Result
- Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024: half to David Baker (computational protein design), half to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper (AlphaFold protein structure prediction).
- AI system
- AlphaFold 2, Rosetta/RFdiffusion lineage
- Human role
- Award recognising human-built AI systems
- Verification
- Nobel committee
- Status
- confirmed
- Why surprising
- First Nobel awarded for an AI system's scientific achievement, only four years after AlphaFold 2.
What happened
The Nobel committee honored AlphaFold, which predicted the structures of virtually all ~200M known proteins.
Why it matters
Confirmed AI as a tool of first-rank scientific discovery, less than four years after AlphaFold 2.
Changelog
- 2026-09-29: created
- 2026-09-29: added science block (science & math tab)
Related events
- AlphaFold 2 solves protein structure prediction at CASP14 ★★★★★
- AlphaFold 3 predicts structures and interactions of all life's molecules ★★★★
- Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton ★★★★★
- RFdiffusion: diffusion models design new proteins that work in the lab ★★★★
- FT: Google DeepMind has broken up its Nobel-winning AlphaFold team; Jumper, Adler and Pritzel now at Anthropic ★★★
Sources (3)
- officialNobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 press release (NobelPrize.org)
- officialNobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 summary (NobelPrize.org)
- discussionWikipedia: Demis Hassabis
id: 2024-10-09-nobel-chemistry-alphafold · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline