Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield win Nobel Prize in Physics

The Nobel Committee has announced the award of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics to British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton and American John Hopfield in recognition of their fundamental contributions to the development of machine learning techniques that laid the foundations for artificial neural networks, a technology that revolutionized the science of artificial intelligence.

Statements of the Royal Swedish Academy The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement that Hopfield and Hinton had taken advantage of tools derived from physics to build models capable of processing and analyzing data in a way that would enable computers to learn new patterns without the need for precise programming of each step.

“This year’s Nobel Prize laureates in Physics used tools from physics to develop methods that form the basis of today’s powerful machine learning,” she added. “Machine learning based on artificial neural networks is currently revolutionizing science, engineering, and everyday life.”

Who is Geoffrey Hinton? Geoffrey Hinton is a British-Canadian computer scientist and cognitive psychologist who is considered one of the most prominent figures in the field of artificial intelligence, and is nicknamed the "Godfather of Artificial Intelligence".

He was born in 1947 and is famous for his work on artificial neural networks.

Who is Joseph Hopfield? John Joseph Hopfield is a famous American scientist working in the field of artificial neural networks. He is particularly known for his invention of the "Hopfield network", a neural model he presented in 1982, which later became one of the most important theoretical foundations in the fields of artificial intelligence and deep learning.

The awards will be distributed on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.