AI, genes and proteins dominate Nobel 2024 prizes
11 Oct 2024
Pioneering work in AI, gene regulation and protein science underpinned this year’s Nobel Prize science awards for physics, physiology or medicine, and chemistry.
British/Canadian academic Geoffrey Hinton – whose warnings about intelligent machines made headlines last year – shares the honours in physics with American John Hopfield for their research into machine learning.
Popularly dubbed as a ‘godfather’ of AI, Hinton’s work on neural networks brought him to a senior role at Google until his high profile resignation in 2023 which was coupled with a general warning on the risks of artificial intelligence systems.
Princeton professor Hopfield was honoured for his development of machine networks that can imitate the brain’s ability to recreate patterns.
The discovery of microRNAs and their role in regulating genes formed the basis of Gary Ruvkun and Victor Ambros’ Nobel for medicine – research dating back to work that began in the early 1990s.
Finally, the 2024 Nobel chemistry prize celebrating the groundbreaking work being carried out into proteins goes to a trio of scientists.
Demis Hassabis and John M Jumper of the Google DeepMind project share one half of the award for their prediction of protein structure via the AlphaFold2 AI model; it subsequently predicted the structure of most of the 200 million identified proteins, providing potential breakthroughs in many areas of science.
While the launch of AlphaFold2 dates back to 2020, the other half of the chemistry award recognises work that began more than two decades earlier. David Baker of the University of Washington in Seattle achieved a breakthrough in computational protein design in 2023, following up his initial success with subsequent creations employed in pharmaceuticals, sensors and other applications.
The Nobel Prizes consist of five awards, three for sciences plus the literature and peace prizes. A further associated award in honour of founder Alfred Nobel, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize, is awarded for economics.
Prize money is currently around 11 million Swedish kroner (c£800,000) per award, with winners sharing in the overall amount. The awards are formally presented on 10 December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. For further details, click here.
Pic: Shutterstock (SuperJoseph)
