John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2024. Photo: www.nobelprize.org

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”, The Royal Swedish Academy of Science announced on Tursday (October 8, 2024).

The Nobel Prize 2024: An interactive guide

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, the Academy’s media statement said.

John J. Hopfield, Professor at Princeton University, invented a network that uses a method for saving and recreating patterns. The Hopfield network utilises physics that describes a material’s characteristics due to its atomic spin – a property that makes each atom a tiny magnet.

When the Hopfeld network is fed a distorted or incomplete image, it methodically works through the nodes and updates their values so the network’s energy falls. The network thus works stepwise to fnd the saved image that is most like the imperfect one it was fed with.

Geoffrey Hinton, Professor at University of Toronto, used the Hopfield network as the foundation for a new network that uses a diferent method: the Boltzmann machine. This can learn to recognise characteristic elements in a given type of data. Professor Hinton used tools from statistical physics, the science of systems built from many similar components.

The Boltzmann machine can be used to classify images or create new examples of the type of pattern on which it was trained. Mr. Hinton has built upon this work, helping initiate the current explosive development of machine learning.

“The laureates’ work has already been of the greatest beneft. In physics we use artifcial neural networks in a vast range of areas, such as developing new materials with specifc properties,” said Ellen Moons, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics

Last year, The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electro dynamics in matter.

The Nobel announcement week kicked off on Monday (October 7, 2024) with the Medicine Nobel announcement. The academy awarded Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun the Nobel Prize for Physiology for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.

Nobel Prize 2024: When and where to watch the announcements?

The winner for Chemistry will be announced tomorrow (October 9) and the winners of the Literature, Peace and Economic Sciences Prize will be declared on October 10, October 11, and October 14 respectively.

The prizes carry a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000) and will be awarded on December 10.

The Nobel Prize was created by Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who in his will dictated that his estate should be used to fund “prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind”.

(With inputs from Agencies)