This week confirmed, if ever it was in doubt, that it is truly chic to be a geek.
On Wednesday, the BioNTech/Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine won regulatory approval in the UK, offering the best hope to counter the pandemic that has killed nearly 1.5m people and trashed the global economy.
Two days earlier, Google DeepMind, the London-based artificial intelligence company, revealed that its AlphaFold system could predict protein structures, helping to solve a puzzle that has frustrated researchers for 50 years. DeepMind claimed the breakthrough might accelerate drug discovery, plastic waste reduction and carbon capture. Venki Ramakrishnan, the Nobel laureate and president of the Royal Society, described it as a “stunning advance”.