Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 awarded to John Hopfield, Geoffrey Hinton for machine learning breakthroughs

Scientists John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton have won the Nobel Prize in physics 2024 for their work in the field of machine learning. They have won the prestigious honour “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks”, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced. 

The Nobel Prize official social media handle made the announcement on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday. The post reads, “The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2024 #NobelPrize in Physics to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks”.”

John J Hopfield and Geoffrey E Hinton were honoured with the accolade on Tuesday following Nobel physics committee's decision earlier in the day.

The announcement was made by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on October 8. According to the official announcement, this year’s Nobel Laureates in Physics used physics tools to develop methods that form the basis of today’s powerful machine learning.

John J Hopfield, a US physicist, created an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other patterns in data. Geoffrey E Hinton, a Canadian-British computer scientist and cognitive psychologist, invented a method that can automatically find properties in data. This allows it to identify specific elements in pictures.

New physics laureate Geoffrey Hinton said, “I'm in a cheap hotel in California which doesn't have a good internet or phone connection. I was going to have an MRI scan today but I'll have to cancel that!” during the press conference following his Nobel Prize announcement.

Given below is the schedule for 2024 Nobel Prize announcements scheduled in the coming days:

• Chemistry – October 9 (Wednesday)
• Literature – October 10 (Thursday)
• Peace – October 11 (Friday)
• Economic sciences – October 14 (Monday)

Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were jointly honoured with the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or medicine on October 7. The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet awarded the prize “for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation”.