Nobel in physics awarded to John Hopfield, Geoffrey Hinton

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks, according to a statement.

“This year’s physics laureates John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton used tools from physics to construct methods that helped lay the foundation for today’s powerful machine learning. Hopfield created a structure that can store and reconstruct information. Hinton invented a method that can independently discover properties in data and which has become important for the large artificial neural networks now in use,” it said.

Although computers cannot think, machines can now mimic functions such as memory and learning. The 2024 Nobel Prize laureates in physics have helped make this possible. Using fundamental concepts and methods from physics, they have developed technologies that use structures in networks to process information.