Nobel Prize Conversations

“I got the phone call and my wife promptly started screaming.” News of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry gave David Baker’s household a very early wake up call. Here, just after the prize announcement, Baker speaks to the Nobel Prize’s Adam Smith about the exciting potential of building brand new proteins, the inspirational effect his fellow laureates have had on his field and whether it is necessary to understand how predictive algorithms work.

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“It’s absolutely extraordinary.” John Jumper had just heard the news of his 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry when he spoke to the Nobel Prize’s Adam Smith. “I thought I had a 10 % chance,” he reveals. To save his nerves, his plan had been to sleep in until after the announcement, which didn’t quite work out. In the interview, he talks about being the youngest chemistry laureate in over 70 years, and about AI’s role in science. “What I love about all this is that we can draw a straight line from what we do to people being healthy.”

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“The best scientists paired with these kinds of tools will be able to do incredible things.” Demis Hassabis, 2024 Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry, reflects on building the right research environment and the interplay between AI and individual scientists. This short conversation with Nobel Prize’s Adam Smith was recorded just after he had received the call from Stockholm.

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“You have to build up from the bottom.” In this interview shortly after the announcement, 2024 physics laureate John Hopfield talks about how he found out about the prize when he was going through his e-mails. ”It didn't sink it until I got to the fourth e-mail!” Hopfield reflects on how to tackle big questions, such as how the mind works, in this conversation. He and his wife Mary Waltham spoke to the Nobel Prize’s Adam Smith from his cottage in the village of Selborne in England, which was home to the 18th century naturalist Gilbert White.

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“How could I be sure it wasn’t a spoof call?” 2024 physics laureate Geoffrey Hinton received the phone call from Stockholm at around 2am in a hotel room in California, and multiple Swedish accents helped reassure him that his Nobel Prize in Physics was real. Greatly surprised, he talks to the Nobel Prize’s Adam Smith about the state of machine learning, the pressing need for safety research, and his hopes that the award might make people take the fears he voices more seriously.

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“We see it as a celebration of the way of doing science,” says Victor Ambros of his Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In this call with the Nobel Prize’s Adam Smith, Ambros speaks about the joy of basic research and the ever-expanding fascination of RNA. Recorded just after Ambros found out about the prize, we also discover how the news was broken to the new laureate by his son, who began with the leading question, “Have you been getting calls from Sweden?”

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“I heard what sounded like an authentic call from the Nobel Committee!” New medicine laureate Gary Ruvkun might have received a prank call or two in the past, but today’s was genuine. He talked to the Nobel Prize’s Adam Smith minutes after hearing the news, about the pleasure of finding things out, the electrifying growth of the microRNA field over the years, and the benefits of taking time out. And as for what’s about to follow: “It’s going to be a fun ride!”

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Is the creative process different in the fields of art, literature and music? In a podcast conversation, literature laureate Jon Fosse speaks about all three fields and how they are similar in many ways. American painter Mark Rothko is mentioned as a source of inspiration as well as art in general. We also get insights into Fosse's childhood where music was large part of his life.

Today Jon Fosse enjoys a world of silence and avoids the noise of the world if possible. He describes his writing process, how he enjoys writing by hand with fountain pens and how a reader can tell if a book is written by hand or not. He also speaks about his relationship to God and religion.  

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Hear physics laureate Pierre Agostini describe how he found his love of science: ”It was only when I started doing research that I discovered the fun of physics." Together with podcast host Adam Smith, he talks about multiphoton ionisation, Planck time and contradicting Einstein. 

Agostini also tells us about how his life has changed after being awarded the 2023 physics prize and how it has taken him some time to get used to his new role as a Nobel Prize laureate.

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Is it possible to 'see' quantum mechanics in action? In a podcast conversation, chemistry laureate Moungi Bawendi speaks about the incredible gratification of visualising quantum mechanics and how his collaboration with co-laureate Louis Brus started.

He also shares his love of music and speaks about how his lab's yearly ski trip helps his group work better together. Intuition and diversity in science are two more topics that are up for discussion. 

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