Physiology or Medicine
Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun discovered microRNA, a new class of tiny RNA molecules that play a crucial role in gene regulation. Their groundbreaking discovery in the small worm C. elegans revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation. This turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans. MicroRNAs are proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.
Physics
John Hopfield introduced a spin model that can store and reconstruct information. Geoffrey Hinton built on Hopfield’s idea to invent the Boltzmann Machine, that is able to learn from examples to reconstruct a set of desired patterns. He also popularized and improved Backpropagation of Errors, a method actually used in today’s advanced AI technology (e.g. Deep Learning).
Chemistry
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 is about proteins, life’s ingenious chemical tools. David Baker has succeeded with the almost impossible feat of building entirely new kinds of proteins. Demis Hassabis and John Jumper have developed an AI model to solve a 50-year-old problem: predicting proteins’ complex structures. These discoveries hold enormous potential.
