David Baker won half the 2024 Chemistry Nobel for protein design

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was split. One half went to David Baker “for computational protein design,” and the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of DeepMind “for protein structure prediction.” Baker’s recognized breakthrough dates to 2003, when his lab used its computational methods to design Top7, the first protein with a fold unlike any found in nature. His group later built the RFdiffusion generative design system. The two halves of the prize mark the two directions of the problem: predicting the shape of existing proteins, and designing entirely new ones.