John M. Jumper facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
John Jumper
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Jumper giving his 2024 Nobel Prize lecture
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John Michael Jumper
1985 (age 39–40) Little Rock, Arkansas, U.S.
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| Education |
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| Known for | AlphaFold |
| Awards | Marshall Scholarship (2007) Nature's 10 (2021) BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2022) Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2023) Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2024) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Artificial intelligence Machine learning |
| Institutions | Google DeepMind |
| Thesis | New methods using rigorous machine learning for coarse-grained protein folding and dynamics (2017) |
| Doctoral advisor | Tobin R Sosnick Karl Freed |
John Michael Jumper (born 1985) is an American scientist. He is a chemist and a computer scientist. In 2024, John Jumper and Demis Hassabis won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They received this award for their amazing work on predicting how proteins are shaped.
Jumper works as a director at Google DeepMind. He and his team created AlphaFold. AlphaFold is an artificial intelligence (AI) program. It can predict the 3D shape of proteins very accurately. These predictions are based on the protein's amino acid sequence, which is like its building block list. Jumper has said that the AlphaFold team plans to share 100 million protein structures with the world.
The science magazine Nature recognized Jumper in 2021. They included him in their annual list of "Nature's 10." This list highlights ten people who made a big difference in science that year.
Education
John Jumper studied at several universities. In 2007, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree. He studied both physics and mathematics at Vanderbilt University. Later, in 2010, he received a Master of Philosophy degree. This was in theoretical physics from the University of Cambridge in England. He attended Cambridge on a special scholarship called the Marshall Scholarship.
He continued his studies at the University of Chicago. In 2012, he earned a Master of Science degree in theoretical chemistry. Then, in 2017, he completed his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree. A PhD is a very high degree for people who do a lot of research. His main teachers at the University of Chicago were Tobin R. Sosnick and Karl Freed.
Career
John Jumper's main research focuses on protein structure prediction. This means he works on creating computer programs. These programs try to figure out the exact 3D shape of proteins. Understanding protein shapes is very important for science and medicine.
AlphaFold: Predicting Protein Shapes
AlphaFold is a special kind of deep learning program. Deep learning is a part of artificial intelligence. John Jumper and his team at DeepMind developed AlphaFold. DeepMind is a research company owned by Alphabet Inc, which is Google's parent company.
AlphaFold's main job is to predict the 3D structure of proteins. Proteins are tiny machines inside our bodies and all living things. Their shape helps them do their jobs. Before AlphaFold, figuring out these shapes was very hard and took a long time. AlphaFold changed that by making it much faster and more accurate.
Awards and Honors
In November 2020, AlphaFold won a big international competition. It was called the 14th Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP). This competition tests different computer programs. It finds out which one can best predict the 3D shapes of proteins. AlphaFold won by a lot! It scored over 90 for about two-thirds of the proteins. This score is called the global distance test (GDT). A GDT score of 100 means a perfect match to the real protein shape.
In 2021, Jumper received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award. This award was in the "Biology and Biomedicine" category. In 2022, he was given the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences. For 2023, he received the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. These awards were all for developing AlphaFold.
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In 2023, he also received the Canada Gairdner International Award. He was also given the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research.
In 2024, John Jumper and Demis Hassabis shared half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They won for their work on protein folding predictions. The other half of the prize went to David Baker. Baker was recognized for his work on designing new proteins using computers.
In 2025, Jumper received the Golden Plate Award. This award is from the American Academy of Achievement. He also received the Marshall Medal. This medal is from the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission. In 2025, he was also chosen to be a Fellow of the Royal Society. This is a very high honor for scientists in the United Kingdom.
