American Physical Society congratulates winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics

Two scientists have received the prize for using physics tools to understand and train artificial neural networks.

Today, the American Physical Society celebrates John J. Hopfield of Princeton University and Geoffrey E. Hinton of the University of Toronto for sharing one of the highest honors in science — the Nobel Prize in Physics. The physics prize was awarded for “foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”

Inspired by the structure of the brain, artificial neural networks are computer architectures made up of large numbers of interconnected nodes that function like neurons and whose behavior can be analyzed using statistical physics. These networks, which can imitate functions like learning and memory, are increasingly used as tools for language processing, facial recognition, image classification, and other complex analyses. Hinton and Hopfield’s discoveries helped lay the foundation for artificial intelligence by applying physics to network theory.

Hopfield has been a long-standing member of APS. He is also an APS Fellow, was the APS President in 2006, and received the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize in 1969 and the Max Delbrück Prize in Biological Physics in 1985. He joins 126 other physics Nobel laureates who have been a part of the APS community.

Hopfield discussed his Nobel Prize-winning work, together with other research on artificial neural networks, in a review paper published in Reviews of Modern Physics. That paper, along with all past Nobel Prize-winning research published in Physical Review Letters, is now available to read for free.

APS congratulates the winners for this incredible achievement and thanks them for their contributions to the advancement of physics.