Long before Demis Hassabis pioneered artificial intelligence techniques to earn a Nobel prize, he was a master of board games.

A British scientist has credited playing chess with helping him win the Nobel Prize. Sir Demis Hassabis, the chief executive and co-founder of the artificial intelligence giant Google DeepMind, won the Nobel Prize for chemistry for his work on the AI programme AlphaFold.

Back in 1972, Christian Anfinsen won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for showing that the sequence of a protein's amino acid building blocks dictates the protein's shape, which, in turn, influences its function. If a protein folds incorrectly, it may not work properly and could lead to diseases such as Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis or diabetes.