Demis Hassabis, co-founder of Google DeepMind, receives Nobel Prize in Chemistry

British computer scientist Professor Demis Hassabis has won part of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his “revolutionary” work on proteins, the building blocks of life.

Prof Hassabis, 48, co-founded the artificial intelligence company that became Google DeepMind.

Professor John Jumper, 39, who worked with Prof Hassabis on the breakthrough, shares the award with US-based Professor David Baker, 60.

Proteins are the building blocks of life and are found in every cell of the human body.

A better understanding of proteins has led to major breakthroughs in medicine. It is used to solve antibiotic resistance and to image enzymes that can break down plastics.

Prof. Hassabis and Prof. Jumper used artificial intelligence to predict the structures of almost all known proteins and developed a tool called AlphaFold2.

Proteins are made up of chains of building blocks called amino acids, each of which folds into a unique shape. Scientists have long struggled to predict the shape of each of the millions of proteins, but that structure determines what it does in the human body.

Understanding the structure is crucial to knowing how to target the protein and alter its behavior, which is crucial in medicine.

The Nobel Committee called AlphaFold2 a “complete revolution,” and the tool is now used on 200 million proteins worldwide.

Before the pair began looking at the problem, only a tiny fraction of the protein structures had been deciphered.

The couple received half of the Nobel Prize. The other half went to Prof. Baker for what the committee called an “almost impossible feat” in building new proteins.

In 2003, Prof. Baker used amino acids to engineer a new protein, opening the door to developing new proteins used in pharmaceuticals, vaccines and other tools.

He also used computer software to predict protein structures and designed the Rosette program in the 1990s.

Prof. Baker, who works at the University of Washington in Seattle, told the committee shortly after the announcement that he was “very excited and very honored.”

“I stood on the shoulders of giants,” he said when asked how he cracked the code to make proteins.

He said he was sleeping when the phone rang and when the announcement was made his wife “started screaming really loudly.”

The announcement was made by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences at a press conference in Stockholm, Sweden.

The winners will share prize money worth 11 million Swedish krona (£810,000). Prof. Baker receives half of the prize, the remaining half goes to Prof. Hassabis and Prof. Jumper.

Prof. Hassabis grew up in London with Greek Cypriot and Singaporean parents.

He was a child prodigy at chess and reached the master class at the age of 13.

He completed his A-levels at the age of 16 and was asked by Cambridge University to take a gap year due to his young age.

Before and after graduating with a degree in computer science, he worked in computer game design and won numerous awards.

He then received his doctorate from University College London before working at several US universities.

In 2010, he co-founded the machine learning company DeepMind, which was acquired by Google in 2014.

The goal is to use neuroscience with machine learning to develop powerful algorithms that can be applied to a range of problems.

His work has been recognized with numerous prizes, including the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.