The 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is being awarded to Frances H. Arnold “for the directed evolution of enzymes” and jointly to George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter “for the phage display of peptides and antibodies.”

Half of this year’s Nobel prize in chemistry is awarded to Frances Arnold, “for the directed evolution of enzymes”. The other half is shared by George Smith and Sir Gregory Winter, “for the phage display of peptides and antibodies”. But the real winner here is the scientific theory of evolution, for all three laureates harnessed its power to make proteins more useful for medicine and chemistry.