Just when they believed they were passed over for this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry, two scientists from Google's DeepMind AI research team got the call -- mere minutes before they were announced as honorees.

A day after recognizing former Google vice president and engineering fellow Geoffrey Hinton for his contributions to the field of physics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has honored a pair of current Google employees.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three scientists today — two of which are significant figures at Google DeepMind — for their work around proteins, which the Nobel Prize committee describes as the “chemical tools of life.”