The character arc of David Baker
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born on 6 October 1962 in Seattle, the son of a physicist and a geophysicist. Between then and now sit a biology degree from Harvard in 1984, a doctorate in biochemistry at Berkeley in 1989 on how proteins are moved around inside yeast, postdoctoral training in biophysics finished in 1993, a faculty post at the University of Washington the same year, an algorithm for predicting protein structure from first principles, years of entering a public competition where every prediction is scored, a distributed computing project and a video game that let the public help, the first artificial protein with a novel fold, more than six hundred papers, a dozen companies, and a share of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Drag along the line to move, pinch or use the buttons to look closer. Tap the line to pluck it, or any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of his life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is David Baker?
Every wrong prediction was public. He entered anyway, for years.
His father was a physicist and his mother a geophysicist, and he went to a public high school in Seattle. He took a biology degree at Harvard in 1984, then joined a laboratory at Berkeley where he worked mostly on how proteins are transported and trafficked inside yeast cells, and took his doctorate in biochemistry in 1989. He finished postdoctoral training in biophysics in 1993 and joined the University of Washington School of Medicine as a faculty member the same year.
The problem he took on is easy to state and was, for decades, close to impossible. A protein is a chain that folds itself into a specific three dimensional shape, and the shape is what it does. Predicting the shape from the chain was the open question. His group built an algorithm to do it from first principles, and then did the harder thing: turned it round, and used it to design proteins that do not exist in nature.
What makes the middle of this line unusual is that he kept entering a competition. In the field's regular structure prediction contest, groups submit predictions and are scored publicly against experimental answers nobody has seen. His group competed regularly, specialising in the hardest category, which means a long public record of being not quite right before being right.
He also gave the problem away. The algorithm became a distributed computing project that ran on volunteers' home machines, and then a video game that let members of the public fold proteins by hand and beat the software at it. He directed the consortium of laboratories that develops the software. Later his group built a version using artificial intelligence.
His group designed the first artificial protein with a novel fold, a shape nature had never made. He has authored more than six hundred papers, co-founded more than a dozen biotechnology companies, is an investigator at a medical institute and directs an institute for protein design. He gave a public talk in April 2019 titled five challenges we could solve by designing new proteins, and in 2024 he was awarded a share of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for computational protein design.
The moments
David Baker's timeline.
The 1960s
Born in Seattle
Everyday. A physicist and a geophysicist, and a son who chose biology.
The 1980s
A biology degree at Harvard
Milestone, and it changed his direction. Biology, in a household of physical scientists.
A doctorate on proteins in yeast
Milestone, and it changed everything. Learning how a cell moves proteins about, which is where it starts.
The 1990s
A laboratory of his own
Milestone, and it changed everything. Thirty years old, with a laboratory and a hard question.
Predict them, or design them
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: turn it round and design, taken, or perfect the prediction. His group designed the first artificial protein with a novel fold, and he was awarded a share of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for computational protein design in 2024.
The Rosetta algorithm
Milestone, and it changed everything. A method for guessing the shape a chain will fold into.
The 2000s
A medical institute investigator
Milestone, and it changed his direction. The funding that lets a laboratory chase a long problem.
Scored in public, every time
Milestone, and it changed everything. A competition where the wrong answers are published too.
A first major prize
Milestone, and it changed his direction. The field noticing, nine years in.
A protein that never existed
Milestone, and it changed everything. A shape nature had not made, made on purpose.
Two prizes for the design work
Milestone, and it changed his direction. Two awards in a year, for the turn from predicting to making.
He gives the problem away
Milestone, and it changed everything. A video game, so strangers could try to beat the software.
The 2010s
Eleven million for the institute
Milestone, and it changed his direction. Money at the scale the question needed.
Five challenges, in public
Milestone. Explaining to a general audience what a designed protein is for.
The 2020s
A Breakthrough Prize
Milestone, and it changed his direction. Three major prizes in two years, and a new version of the software.
A share of the Nobel Prize
Milestone, and it changed everything. Thirty one years after he started the laboratory.
He turned his own laboratory's hardest problem into a video game and let strangers beat his software at it. What he set moving is proteins that never existed until somebody designed them, and a way of working that assumed the answer would come faster if everybody could see the wrong ones.
Your turn
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His is years of being publicly scored on wrong answers, in a field that thought the question was unanswerable. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about five minutes.
David Baker: frequently asked questions
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More character arcs
Lives that rhyme with his.
Sources
- David Baker, English Wikipedia biography.
- Publication and competition records for the Rosetta algorithm, the CASP structure prediction competition and the design of Top7.
- Award records for the Overton Prize in 2002, the Breakthrough Prize in 2021 and the share of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024.
- The record carries no collapse or crisis of his own, and none is invented here.