Geoffrey Hinton wins the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics

General news

October 9, 2024

NSERC congratulates University of Toronto Professor Emeritus Dr. Geoffrey Hinton on being named a winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics. He shares the award with Princeton University's John J. Hopfield for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.

This year's winners in physics are being recognized for having used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today's powerful machine learning, based on artificial neural networks, that is revolutionizing science, engineering and daily life. Dr. Hinton is receiving the prize for research that led to the invention of a method that can autonomously find properties in data and carry out tasks such as identifying specific elements in pictures.

NSERC very proudly provided support for Dr. Hinton's discovery research from 1986, when he received his first NSERC grant to continue his research on artificial neural networks in Canada at the University of Toronto, to 2017. He also held the Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning and has received NSERC partnership grants for research supporting the application of neural network learning algorithms to real tasks. His seminal contributions to machine learning and artificial intelligence earned him the 2010 Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering from NSERC.

This is the fourth time in the past decade that a Canadian has won the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 2015, Dr. Arthur B. McDonald of Queen's University received the prize for his role in the discovery of neutrino oscillations. In 2018, Dr. Donna Strickland of the University of Waterloo won the prize for her contribution towards groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics. And, in 2019, Dr. James Peebles of Princeton University was recognized for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology.