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.

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

The award this week of Nobel prizes in chemistry and physics to a small number of artificial intelligence pioneers affiliated with Google has stirred debate over the company's research dominance and how breakthroughs in computer science ought to be recognised.