US scientist John Hopfield and British-Canadian colleague Geoffrey Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for discoveries and inventions that laid the foundation for machine learning, the award-giving body said on Tuesday.
The award comes with a prize sum of 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million), which is shared between the winners if there are several. The physics prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
“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 award-giving body said in a statement.
“Machine learning based on artificial neural networks is currently revolutionising science, engineering and daily life.”
Widely considered the most prestigious prize for physicists across the world, it was created, along with awards for achievements in science, literature and peace, in the will of Alfred Nobel.
The prizes have been awarded with a few interruptions since 1901, though the Nobel economics honour is a later addition in memory of the Swedish businessman and philanthropist, who had made a fortune from his invention of dynamite.
Outside the sometimes controversial choices for peace and literature, physics often makes the biggest splash among the prizes, with the list of past winners featuring scientific superstars 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 in creating ultra-short pulses of light that can give a snapshot of changes within atoms, potentially improving the detection of diseases.
Physics is the second Nobel to be awarded this week, after U.S. scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun won the medicine prize for their discovery of microRNA and its role in gene regulation, shedding light on how cells specialise.
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