The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for their contributions to the discovery of all known protein structures. The prize is split in two, with half going to David Baker for his contributions to computational protein design. The other half to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for their contributions to protein structure prediction using Google DeepMind.
Today, John Jumper announced that he is leaving DeepMind after 9 years to join Anthropic. While at DeepMind, Jumper led the AlphaFold team. Hassabis and Jumper developed the AlphaFold artificial intelligence (AI) at Google DeepMind four years ago, which discovered more than 200 million protein structures in the world to advance medical science. So far, AlphaFord's discoveries have been used to develop better antibiotics and solutions to the problem of plastic pollution.
Jumper's hiring is seen as Anthropic's effort to expand the use of AI in science. Google DeepMind already has several successful science projects in addition to AlphaFold and a two-week weather forecasting model.
OpenAI is also doubling down on its efforts in the same field, while Midjourney this week unexpectedly entered the medical field by announcing an AI-powered ultrasonic body scanner.
