Scientists John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning within artificial neural networks, the award-giving body said on Tuesday.
The physics prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The Nobel committee said:
John Hopfield created associative memory, which can store and retrieve images and other types of patterns in data. Geoffrey Hinton invented a method that can autonomously find features in data and thus perform tasks such as identifying certain elements in images.
Ellen Moons, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said the work of “the laureates has already made a huge difference.” The expert said:
In physics, we use artificial neural networks in a wide range of areas, such as developing new materials with specific properties.
The Nobel Prize in physics is being awarded on Tuesday, a day after two US scientists won the medicine prize for their discovery of microRNA.
Last year, three scientists won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their first look at the ultrafast world of spinning electrons, a field that could one day lead to better electronics or disease diagnostics.
The 2023 prize went to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz for their work with the tiny part of the atom that spins around the centre and is the basis of almost everything: chemistry, physics, bodies and gadgets.
The six days of Nobel prizes began on Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize for their discovery of tiny bits of genetic material that serve as switches inside cells and help control what cells do and when.
If scientists can better understand how they work and how to manipulate them, it could one day lead to powerful treatments for diseases such as cancer.
The Physics Prize provides a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from funds bequeathed by its creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The prize has been awarded 117 times. Laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.
