741–750 of 876 posts
This is totally bizarre, no precedent for it really. The reality of the prize means that less and less are the winners names every physicist has heard of, but even today they're still big names in each subfield. For e.g. Kosterlitz, Thouless and Haldane weren't exactly household names but they really deserved the prize in 2016. In this case, there's a good argument that Hopfield had conducted strong work as a physici…
My perspective as a PhD in theoretical physics, who's been doing deep learning in the last 4 years: 1. The prize itself makes zero sense as a prize in _physics_. Even the official announcement by the Nobel Prize Committee, taken at a face value, reads as a huge stretch in trying to link neural networks to physics. When one starts asking questions about the real impact on physics and whether the most important works o…
I find the prize a bit odd this time since it focused on Hopfield networks and Boltzmann machines. Picking those two architectures in particular seems a bit arbitrary. Besides, Parisi got the prize last year (edit: actually 2021, time flies) for spin glasses. Hopfield networks are quite related. They could have included Hopfield & Hinton too, and it would have looked more coherent. It is also concerning that lately t…
What bizarre choice. Hinton’s work has nothing to do with physics. Nobel prize jumping on the bandwagon, just like they did for mRNA after covid. At least that was related to medicine. The first 2 paragraphs of the linked pdf read like a joke. Like it’s a parody announcement.
This is totally bizarre, no precedent for it really. The reality of the prize means that less and less are the winners names every physicist has heard of, but even today they're still big names in each subfield. For e.g. Kosterlitz, Thouless and Haldane weren't exactly household names but they really deserved the prize in 2016. In this case, there's a good argument that Hopfield had conducted strong work as a physici…
I find the prize a bit odd this time since it focused on Hopfield networks and Boltzmann machines. Picking those two architectures in particular seems a bit arbitrary. Besides, Parisi got the prize last year (edit: actually 2021, time flies) for spin glasses. Hopfield networks are quite related. They could have included Hopfield & Hinton too, and it would have looked more coherent. It is also concerning that lately t…
How lately? Einstein never got one for special and general relativity, for example.
I find the prize a bit odd this time since it focused on Hopfield networks and Boltzmann machines. Picking those two architectures in particular seems a bit arbitrary. Besides, Parisi got the prize last year (edit: actually 2021, time flies) for spin glasses. Hopfield networks are quite related. They could have included Hopfield & Hinton too, and it would have looked more coherent. It is also concerning that lately t…
> Hopfield networks and Boltzmann machines Think of this as a Nobel prize for systems physics – essentially "creative application of statistical mechanics" – and it makes a lot more sense why you'd pick these two. (I am a mineral physicist who now works in machine learning, and I absolutely think of the entire field as applied statistical mechanics; is that correct? Yes and no: it's a valid metaphor.)
I love how folks from different backgrounds can interpret it in so many ways.
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NNs have absolutely revolutionized systems biology (itself a John Hopfield joint, and the AlphaFold team are reasonably likely to get a Nobel for medicine and physiology, possibly as soon as 'this year') and are becoming relevant in all kinds of weird parts of solid-state physics (trained functionals for DFT, eg https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-64619-8 ). The idea that academic disciplines are in any way is…
My personal theory is that Demis and John will win the Chemistry prize for AlphaFold this year and that they decided to also award this one to help bolster the idea that ML is making fundamental improvements in academic science. I would prefer if there was an actual Nobel Prize for Mathematics (not sure if the Fields would become that, or a new prize created).
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I am really surprised. I would have guessed that a Nobel Prize would be awarded to advancements in the field itself. Not for inspirations from it or to tools that led to advancements. Although as I write this I'm sure there have been several prizes awarded to scientists / engineers who have developed tools to advance physics. Like radio astronomy? Still surprised though.
Some other recent cases of the prize being given to an engineering contribution: - 2018 was for chirped pulse amplification, which is most commonly used in medicine (LASIK surgery for example) - 2014 was for basically for LED lights - 2010 was for a method for producing graphene - 2009 was for both charge-coupled device, which is a component for digital imaging (including regular consumer digital cameras), and fibre-…
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What are you considering "high energy physics"? "1/3-1/2 of Nobel Prizes in the 20th century" is a significant overestimation unless you are including topics not traditionally included in high energy physics. For example, there were many Nobel prizes in nuclear physics, which shares various parallels with high energy physics in terms of historical origins, experimental techniques, and theoretical foundations. But nuc…
Much of nuclear physics was effectively “high energy physics” (or more appropriately named elementary particle physics) back in the day. They ceased to be elementary or high energy at some point. My very loose categorization is everything on the microscopic path towards the fundamental theories; and there’s another macroscopic path, cosmology. Edit: Expanded a few times.