The Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced the winner of the Nobel Prize 2024 in Physics on 8 October 2024. This is the 118th Nobel Prize in the field of Physics. The award is awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, with prize money of 11 million crowns ($1.1 million). The award is being given for discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning within artificial neural networks.
Hopfield designed a system for storing and reassembling data. He developed a technique that is key to the large neural networks currently in use that can independently find properties in data.
Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 selected
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is responsible for selecting the Nobel Prize winners in Physics. The Academy appoints a working group, the Nobel Committee for Physics, which examines the nominations and makes suggestions for final contenders. Although the committee officially has five voting members, voting assistant members have been part of it for some years.
The Physics Class of the Academy, a large body, discusses the committee’s proposal and has the option of changing it or submitting an entirely new one to the Academy. Ultimately, at the last Academy meeting, other suggestions may be made. Theoretically, one could propose that there be no awards this year, although this is rarely an option chosen.
