John Hopfield of Princeton University and Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto are the recipients of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Tuesday. Inspired by the structure of the brain, the laureates drew on statistical mechanics to develop the pivotal tools that underpin the AI technology in widespread use today. Psychologist Donald Hebb proposed in the 1940s that the brain learns through the reinforcement of connections between neurons. In making the award, the Nobel committee cited three successive research developments led by the laureates that transformed Hebb’s initial description into the groundwork for computer-based deep learning.