Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield, Geoffrey Hinton for work enabling machine learning
The physicists received the award for ‘foundational discoveries’ that paved the way for the current boom in Artificial Intelligence technologies.
Scientists John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton on Tuesday won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on machine learning that paved the way for the current boom in Artificial Intelligence technologies.
The two physicists received the award “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks”, said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry.
“This year’s two Nobel Laureates in Physics have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning,” said the organisation.
John Hopfield created an “associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data”, whereas Geoffrey Hinton invented a method to autonomously find properties in data, which allows Artificial Intelligence to perform tasks such as identifying specific elements in pictures.
Hopfield, 91, is an emeritus professor at Princeton University in the United States and Hinton, 77, is an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto in Canada.
Together, they will receive over Rs 8.9 crore in prize money.
On Wednesday, the organisation also announced that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be given to three scientists for their work on “protein structure prediction”.
David Baker, 60, who is a professor at the University of Washington will share the award with Demis Hassabis and John M Jumper who work at Google DeepMind in London, United Kingdom.
“David Baker has succeeded with the almost impossible feat of building entirely new kinds of proteins,” said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. “Demis Hassabis and John Jumper have developed an AI model to solve a 50-year-old problem: predicting proteins’ complex structures. These discoveries hold enormous potential.”
On Monday, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated.
Ambros, 71, is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in the United States and 72-year-old Ruvkun is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.
The Nobel Prizes for literature and economics, in addition to the Nobel Peace Prize, will be announced between October 10 and October 14.
