Almost every year since 1901, the Nobel Foundation has awarded prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace, and additionally in economics since 1968. The prizes are given to an honourable individual, a group of up to three people, or an organization, in the case of the peace prize. The 2024 Nobel Prize laureates have already been selected and the ceremony will take place in December. The following is an overview of this year’s laureates and their achievements in their fields.
John Hopfield (USA) and Geoffrey Hinton (UK) received the Prize in Physics “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks” as stated in their prize motivation. Their research and inventions have added to our understanding of how “machines can now mimic functions such as memory and learning.” Hopfield and Hinton “used tools from physics to construct methods” for image analysis and machine learning.
The Prize in Chemistry is shared between David Baker (USA) “for computational protein design,” and Demis Hassabis (UK) and John Jumper (USA), “for protein structure prediction.” Baker and his research team constructed new artificial proteins that can be used “as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors.” Hassabis and Jumper introduced an AI tool called AlphaFold2 that can predict the structure of almost all known proteins.
For their contribution to genetics and “for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation,” Victor Ambros (USA) and Gary Ruvkun (USA) have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The scientists have been working alongside each other since the late 1980s and made their discovery in 1993. Professor Olle Kämpe, Member of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, commented following the prize announcement: “They were looking at two worms [referring to the C. elegans worms that they used for the discovery] that looked a bit funny and decided to understand why.” .
Han Kang is the first South Korean author to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She received the prize “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life,” commented Mats Malm, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy. Growing up reading Korean literature and being very close to it, Kang hopes that “this news is nice for Korean literature readers” as it brings more Korean representation into the world.
The Nobel Peace Prize 2024 has been received by Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese organization of Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors, “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.” The organization has been campaigning for an improvement in healthcare for the Hibakusha (Japanese term for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb survivors) and a ban on the use of nuclear weapons. Their two main objectives are “to promote the social and economic rights of all Hibakusha” and “to ensure that no one ever again is subjected to the catastrophe that befell the Hibakusha.”
Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel has been awarded to Daron Acemoglu (Turkey), Simon Johnson (UK) and James Robinson (USA), “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.” The laureates have “provided new insights into why there are such vast differences in prosperity between nations,” examined the relationship between institutions and prosperity, and developed a theoretical tool on how to bring change to the system. In the following interview with James Robinson, he commented that “inclusive institutions are not created by well-meaning elites. They’re created by people who fight for their rights and fight for a different vision of society.”
If you would like to read more about this year’s Nobel Prize laureates or are wondering how you could perhaps someday win the prize, visit https://www.nobelprize.org.
Fun fact: did you know that the information about Nobel Prize nominees becomes available at least 50 years after the ceremony and, in some cases, is kept secret for as long as the nominated person is alive? You can find out more about the past nominees on the Nobel Prize nomination archive at https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/.
