Nobel Prize in Physics 2024: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Tuesday that the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics will be given to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks”.
Hopfield from Princeton University in New Jersey, USA, and Hinton from the University of Toronto, Canada, trained artificial neural networks using physics. The two laureates used "tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning", the Nobel Foundation said in a press release.
John Hopfield developed an associative memory capable of storing and reconstructing images and various data patterns, while Geoffrey Hinton pioneered a method that enables autonomous discovery of data properties, allowing tasks like identifying specific elements within images.
Born in 1933, John J. Hopfield went to Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and now teaches at Princeton University, while 77-year-old London-born Geoffrey E. Hinton, who did his PhD from The University of Edinburgh, UK, is currently a professor at University of Toronto, Canada.
The prize amount for Nobel Prize in Physics is 11 million Swedish kronor, which is to be shared equally between the two laureates.
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Hopfield And Hinton's Work That Got Them Nobel
The Nobel Committee noted that John Hopfield developed an associative memory capable of storing and reconstructing images and other data patterns. Geoffrey Hinton, meanwhile, introduced a method that can independently detect features within data, enabling tasks like recognising specific elements in images.
When we talk about artificial intelligence (AI), we usually mean machine learning, which uses artificial neural networks inspired by the brain. In these networks, “neurons” are represented by nodes with values that influence each other, similar to how brain cells interact. These connections can get stronger or weaker as the network learns from data. This year’s Nobel laureates have made breakthroughs in this area since the 1980s.
John Hopfield created a network that can store and retrieve patterns, like recognising images. In his network, nodes act like pixels, and the system works like a puzzle: when given an incomplete or distorted image, it adjusts values to recreate the closest match to the original.
Building on Hopfield’s work, Geoffrey Hinton invented the Boltzmann machine, which can learn to identify common features in data, such as recognising specific objects in pictures. His work has been crucial to modern machine learning, opening doors for many of today’s AI advancements.
Ellen Moons, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, highlighted their impact, noting that these advancements in AI are also helping develop new materials with special properties.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2024 is going to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, who discovered microRNA, as per the announcement made on Monday.
In 2023, the Nobel Prize in Physics went jointly to Pierre Agostini from the Ohio State University, USA; Ferenc Krausz from Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Garching and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany; and Anne L’Huillier from Lund University, Sweden, “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter”.
The Nobel Prize in Physics was first awarded in 1901, and as many as 117 physics prizes had been award until now.