This is

This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science.

I'm Steve Mursky.

This year's prize is about harnessing the power of evolution.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has today decided to award

2018 a Bell Prize in Chemistry with one-half to Francis H. Arnold for the directed evolution of enzymes,

and the other half jointly to George P Smith and Gregory P Winter for the phage display of peptides and antibodies.

Jorin Hansen, Secretary General of the Academy earlier today.

Francis H. Arnold was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the United States in 1956, and she is currently at the California Institute of Technology, Caltech in Pasadena in the Los Angeles area.

George P Smith was born in 1941 in Norway, Connecticut,

and he's currently at the University of Missouri in Colombia in the United States.

Sir Gregory P Winter was born in 1951 in Leicester in the United Kingdom and he is at the

Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the University of Cambridge in England.

So with that I'd like to ask Klaus Gustavsson, Chairman of the Nobel Committee, to make some remarks about the prize.

Klais.

So thank you, Your Honor.

So this year's prize in chemistry rewards a revolution based on evolution.

Our laureates have applied principles of Darwin in the test tubes

and use this approach to develop new types of chemicals for the greatest benefit of humankind.

For thousands of years we humans have used selected breeding to create animals and plants with properties that have been useful for us.

These years Nobel laureates have taken the next step.

They have used a molecular understanding that we today have

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