IT IS A recurring joke among chemists that the Nobel prize for chemistry is, more often than not, awarded for developments in biology. Recent examples include awards for the gene-editing tool CRISPR, in 2020; directed evolution of enzymes and antibodies, in 2018; and DNA repair mechanisms, in 2015. Some may view this year’s prize, which awarded work designing and predicting the structure of proteins, as a continuation of that trend. But the main message lies elsewhere: some of the best brains in chemistry do not only make molecules, they make computer models too.