Forty-eight year-old Demis (Demosthenes) Hassabis, the co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, was described as a child-prodigy at 13, being the top chess player in the world at his age group.
Since then the Londoner with the Famagusta roots embarked on a journey in which he has been carefully selecting ever more demanding mental challenges, methodically fulfilling the mission he has taken on for himself.
The chess gave way to sim games developing and gaming world championships. Then it was computer science at Cambridge and that was followed by a PhD neuroscience by UCL, a purposeful plunge into the deepest secrets of the human brain.
In 2010, DeepMind was set up, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) company which gradually started growing in London. Four years later, a reported £400m offer by Google made Demis’ and his partners’ company the largest and most ambitious business acquisition of the American giant in Europe.
The Nobel Prize was awarded to him for the creation of an algorithm tool called AlphaFold2, which it accurately predicts the structure of almost all known proteins.
The importance of this breakthrough lies in that knowing the structure of a protein allows researchers to target it and change its behaviour to the benefit of human, namely in developing life saving medicine.
In one of his rare interviews, Demis Hassanis had told the Cyprus News Agency soon after DeepMind had been acquired by Google: “If we can actually understand and recreate intelligence, then we could use that technology to help us scientists and so on to solve all the other problems that we want to solve, whether that is understanding economics, understanding disease or understanding climate. Any of these really complex systems that as a society we want to be able to understand and master.”
He had also spoken enthusiastically about his Cypriot roots, with his paternal grandparents hailing from Famagusta. “It makes me feel well that Cypriots are proud of me. (…) I have a Greek way of thinking and what Greece has done for western world from classical times is a huge part of my character, all these inspirational things.”
