John J. Hopfield
Facts
Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach
John J. Hopfield
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2024
Born: 15 July 1933, Chicago, IL, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
Prize motivation: “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks”
Prize share: 1/2
Work
When we talk about artificial intelligence, we often mean machine learning using artificial neural networks. This technology was originally inspired by the structure of the brain. In an artificial neural network, the brain’s neurons are represented by nodes that have different values. In 1982, John Hopfield invented a network that uses a method for saving and recreating patterns. He found inspiration in physics' models of how many small parts in a system affect the system as a whole. The invention became important in, for example, image analysis.
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