Nobel in Physics to John Hopfield, Geoffrey Hinton for Machine Learning breakthroughs

The Nobel Prize in Physics is a yearly award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to those who have made the most outstanding contributions to humankind in the field of physics.

In Short

• The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded according to the will of Alfred Nobel
• It is given to those who have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind in the field of physics
• The 2024 Nobel announcements kicked off with the Medicine Prize announcements

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, announced J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2024 for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.

Machine learning has long been important for research, including the sorting and analysis of vast amounts of data. It is a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) that allows computers to learn from data and improve their performance over time without being explicitly programmed. Instead of following a set of fixed instructions, machine learning algorithms analyse patterns in data, make predictions, and adjust based on new information.

"John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton used tools from physics to construct methods that helped lay the foundation for today’s powerful machine learning. Machine learning based on artificial neural networks is currently revolutionising science, engineering and daily life," the Nobel Prize release said.

The Nobel Prize in Physics is a yearly award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to those who have made the most outstanding contributions to humankind in the field of physics.

John Hopfield invented a network that uses a method for saving and recreating patterns. The Hopfield network utilises physics that describes a material’s characteristics due to its atomic spin – a property that makes each atom a tiny magnet.

Meanwhile, Geoffrey Hinton, also known as the 'godfather of AI' used the Hopfield network as the foundation for a new network that uses a different method: the Boltzmann machine. This can learn to recognise characteristic elements in a given type of data.

Speaking during the Nobel announcement on a call, Hinton expressed, "I am flabbergasted, very surprised," on being conferred with the Nobel.

WATCH NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS ANNOUNCEMENT

While John Hopfield is currently a professor at Princeton University, Geoffrey Hinton is a professor at the University of Toronto

The tradition has been ongoing since 1901, with the prize being awarded 117 times between 1901 and 2023. Notably, John Bardeen is the only laureate who has received the Nobel Prize in Physics twice, in 1956 and 1972.

The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded according to the will of Alfred Bernhard Nobel, the Swedish inventor and industrialist. The award recognizes those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind in the field of physics.

The 2024 Nobel announcements kicked off with the Medicine Prize awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.