Google winning big this year with Nobel Prize as Geoffrey Hinton, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper get laurels

After Geoffrey Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize for Physics, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper have been awarded the Nobel in Chemistry, and they all have Google in common.

In Short

• Demis Hassabis and John Jumper win Nobel for protein structure prediction.
• Hassabis and Jumper developed AlphaFold2, advancing biology and drug discovery
• Google's role in AI research highlighted by these Nobel recognitions

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Wednesday awarded a joint Nobel to Demis Hassabis and John M Jumper “for protein structure prediction.” Demis Hassabis currently serves as the CEO of Google DeepMind, while John Jumper holds the position of Senior Research Scientist at DeepMind. “This year’s chemistry laureates Demis Hassabis and John Jumper have developed an AI model, AlphaFold2, to solve a 50-year-old problem: predicting proteins’ complex structures,” reads an X post by The Nobel Prize.

"Receiving the Nobel Prize is the honour of a lifetime. Thank you to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, to John Jumper and the AlphaFold team, the wider DeepMind and Google teams, and to all my colleagues past and present that made this moment possible. I’ve dedicated my career to advancing AI because of its unparalleled potential to improve the lives of billions of people. AlphaFold has already been used by more than two million researchers to advance critical work, from enzyme design to drug discovery. I hope we'll look back on AlphaFold as the first proof point of AI's incredible potential to accelerate scientific discovery," Hassabis said in a statement after he won the laurel.

"Thank you to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for this extraordinary honor. We are so honored to be recognized for delivering on the long promise of computational biology to help us understand the protein world and to inform the incredible work of experimental biologists. It is a key demonstration that AI will make science faster and ultimately help to understand disease and develop therapeutics. This is the work of an exceptional team at Google DeepMind and this award recognizes their amazing work," wrote Jumper in a statement.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Geoffrey Hinton was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his "foundational discoveries and inventions enabling machine learning with artificial neural networks." Between 2013 and 2023, Hinton worked at Google (Google Brain). While the big credits go to the Laureates, this is also a big moment for Google.

Particularly in the case of Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, the recognition highlights the impact of Google DeepMind, further solidifying its position as a leader in AI research and its practical applications in science. Additionally, the Nobel Prize awarded to Geoffrey Hinton for his contributions to machine learning underscores Google's commitment to advancing AI technologies. Together, these accolades reflect Google’s role in shaping the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to revolutionise various fields, including healthcare and biotechnology.

"It’s incredibly special, and it hasn't fully hit me yet. This is truly the big one!”, said 2024 Chemistry Laureate Demis Hassabis. “If we can build AI in the right way it could be the ultimate tool to help scientists help us explore the universe around us,” he added.

In 2020, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, as part of Google's DeepMind team, developed AlphaFold2, an advanced AI model that successfully predicted the structure of nearly all 200 million known proteins. This breakthrough was a monumental step forward in biology, offering researchers unprecedented insight into the building blocks of life. AlphaFold2's capability to accurately model protein structures has revolutionised drug discovery, disease research, and various fields of biochemistry, providing a valuable resource for scientists around the world. This achievement cemented DeepMind’s place at the forefront of AI-driven scientific discovery.

"John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton used tools from physics to construct methods that helped lay the foundation for today’s powerful machine learning. Machine learning based on artificial neural networks is currently revolutionising science, engineering and daily life," the Nobel Prize release reads.

Geoffrey Hinton's Nobel Prize win, on the other hand, is significant for Google because of his critical contributions to the field of AI while working with Google Brain. Hinton's foundational work on neural networks and machine learning paved the way for technologies that are central to AI advancements today. He was instrumental in developing deep learning algorithms that are now widely used in products and services across Google's ecosystem, from search engines to virtual assistants.

His Nobel recognition for these groundbreaking achievements highlights the crucial role Google played in fostering AI innovation, cementing the company’s legacy as a leader in cutting-edge AI research.