Physicist John Hopfield from the United States and his British-Canadian colleague, Geoffrey Hinton, have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work that laid the foundation for machine learning, according to an announcement by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Tuesday.
The prestigious award comes with a prize sum of $1.1 million, which will be shared between the winners. The award-giving body highlighted that the laureates used tools from physics to develop methods underpinning today’s powerful machine learning technologies.
“Machine learning based on artificial neural networks is currently revolutionising science, engineering, and daily life,” the Academy stated, emphasising the transformative impact of the laureates’ contributions.
Established by Swedish chemist and inventor Alfred Nobel, the Nobel Prizes have been awarded since 1901 to recognise significant achievements in science, literature, and peace, with the economics prize being a later addition. The Nobel Prize in Physics is particularly renowned, with past winners including luminaries such as Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Enrico Fermi.
Last year’s physics prize was awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier for their work on ultra-short pulses of light, which can capture atomic-level changes and potentially improve disease detection.
This week’s awards began with the medicine prize, which was awarded to US scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA and its role in gene regulation, advancing our understanding of cellular specialisation.
