Three US scientists won the Nobel chemistry prize yesterday for pioneering work on computer programs that simulate complex chemical processes and have revolutionised research in areas from drugs to solar energy.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, awarding the prize of eight million crowns (0.9 million) to Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel, said their work had effectively taken chemistry into cyberspace. Long gone were the days of modelling reactions using plastic balls and sticks.

“Today the computer is just as important a tool for chemists as the test tube,” the academy said in a statement. “Computer models mirroring real life have become crucial for most advances made in chemistry today.

“Chemical reactions occur at lightning speed; electrons jump between atomic nuclei, hidden from the prying eyes of scientists,” the academy added.

Today, all pharmaceutical companies have sections dedicated to predicting by computer modelling how a drug molecule will interact with the body

In drug design, for example, researchers can now use computers to calculate how an experimental medicine will react with a particular target protein in the body by working out the interplay of atoms.

Today, all pharmaceutical companies have sections dedicated to predicting by computer modelling how a drug molecule will interact with the body.

But the approach also has applications in industrial processes, such as the design of solar cells or catalysts used in cars. For the former, programs can be used to mimic the process of photosynthesis by which green leaves absorb sunlight and produce oxygen.

Ultimately, the ability to computerise such complex chemical processes might make it possible to simulate a complete living organism at the molecular level – something Levitt has described as one of his dreams.

“It’s like seeing a watch and wondering how actually it works,” Warshel, talking about the use of computer programs, told reporters in Stockholm by phone link. “You can use it to design drugs, or in my case, to satisfy your curiosity.”

Karplus, a US and Austrian citizen, carries out research at the University of Strasbourg and Harvard University. Levitt, a US and British citizen, is at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Warshel, a US and Israeli citizen, is a professor at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

“It has revolutionised chemistry,” Kersti Hermansson, professor in organic chemistry at Uppsala University, said of the computer modelling.

“When you solve equations on the computer, you obtain information that is at such detail, it is almost impossible to get it from any other method... You can really follow like a movie, in time and in space. This is fantastic detail.

“With that knowledge you can solve problems, determine why things happen – energy problems, corrosion, chemical reactions, materials, why the properties are how they are and how you could improve them to design better materials.”

A look at the prize

• Chemical reactions occur at lightning speed; electrons jump between atomic nuclei, hidden from the prying eyes of scientists. The 2013 prize winners in chemistry have made it possible to map the mysterious ways of chemistry by using computers. Detailed knowledge of chemical processes makes it possible to optimise catalysts, drugs and solar cells.

• 104 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry have been awarded to 162 individuals from 1901to 2012. Frederick Sanger won the prize twice. Linus Pauling is the only person to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes, one of which was chemistry in 1954. He was awarded the Peace prize eight years later.

• Only four are women. Two of the four, Marie Curie and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, won unshared chemistry prizes.

• Some famous winners include the Curies, who were the most successful “Nobel Prize family”. The husband-and-wife partnership of Marie Curie and Pierre Curie were awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics. Marie Curie herself won the 1911 chemistry prize. Their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with her husband, Frederic Joliot.

• Adolf Hitler forbade two German winners from receiving the chemistry prize – Richard Kuhn in 1938 and Adolf Butenandt in 1939. (Reuters, nobelprize.org/Chambers Biographical Dictionary)