John Joseph Hopfield (born July 15, 1933) is an American physicist and

emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

professor of

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

, most widely known for his study of

associative neural networks There are many types of artificial neural networks (ANN). Artificial neural networks are computational models inspired by biological neural networks, and are used to approximate functions that are generally unknown. Particularly, they are inspire ...

in 1982. He is known for the development of the

Hopfield network A Hopfield network (or associative memory) is a form of recurrent neural network, or a spin glass system, that can serve as a content-addressable memory. The Hopfield network, named for John Hopfield, consists of a single layer of neurons, where ...

. Previous to its invention, research in artificial intelligence (AI) was in a decay period or

AI winter In the history of artificial intelligence (AI), an AI winter is a period of reduced funding and interest in AI research. In 2024 Hopfield, along with

Geoffrey Hinton Geoffrey Everest Hinton (born 1947) is a British-Canadian computer scientist, cognitive scientist, and cognitive psychologist known for his work on artificial neural networks, which earned him the title "the Godfather of AI". Hinton is Univer ...

, was awarded the

Nobel Prize in Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics () is an annual award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for those who have made the most outstanding contributions to mankind in the field of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the ...

for "foundational discoveries and inventions that enable

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

with

artificial neural network In machine learning, a neural network (also artificial neural network or neural net, abbreviated ANN or NN) is a computational model inspired by the structure and functions of biological neural networks. A neural network consists of connected ...

s." He has been awarded various major physics awards for his work in multidisciplinary fields including

condensed matter physics Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid State of matter, phases, that arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms and elec ...

statistical physics In physics, statistical mechanics is a mathematical framework that applies statistical methods and probability theory to large assemblies of microscopic entities. Sometimes called statistical physics or statistical thermodynamics, its applicati ...

and

biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations ...

Biography

Early life and education

John Joseph Hopfield was born in 1933 in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

to physicists

John Joseph Hopfield John Joseph Hopfield (born July 15, 1933) is an American physicist and emeritus professor of Princeton University, most widely known for his study of associative neural networks in 1982. He is known for the development of the Hopfield network. ...

(born in Poland as Jan Józef Chmielewski) and Helen Hopfield (née Staff). Hopfield received a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

with a major in physics from

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the e ...

in Pennsylvania in 1954 and a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

in physics from

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

in 1958. His doctoral dissertation was titled "A quantum-mechanical theory of the contribution of

exciton An exciton is a bound state of an electron and an electron hole which are attracted to each other by the electrostatic Coulomb's law, Coulomb force resulting from their opposite charges. It is an electrically neutral quasiparticle regarded as ...

s to the complex

dielectric constant The relative permittivity (in older texts, dielectric constant) is the permittivity of a material expressed as a ratio with the electric permittivity of a vacuum. A dielectric is an insulating material, and the dielectric constant of an insul ...

of crystals". His

doctoral advisor A doctoral advisor (also dissertation director, dissertation advisor; or doctoral supervisor) is a member of a university faculty whose role is to guide graduate students who are candidates for a doctorate, helping them select coursework, as well ...

was

Albert Overhauser Albert W. Overhauser (August 17, 1925 – December 10, 2011) was an American physicist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is best known for his theory of the Overhauser effect in nuclear magnetic resonance. The Overhauser effec ...

Career

He spent two years in the theory group at

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, the company operates several lab ...

working on optical properties of semiconductors working with David Gilbert Thomas and later on a quantitative model to describe the cooperative behavior of

hemoglobin Hemoglobin (haemoglobin, Hb or Hgb) is a protein containing iron that facilitates the transportation of oxygen in red blood cells. Almost all vertebrates contain hemoglobin, with the sole exception of the fish family Channichthyidae. Hemoglobin ...

in collaboration with

Robert G. Shulman Robert Gerson Shulman (born March 3, 1924) is an American biophysicist and Sterling Professor Emeritus of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and a senior research scientist at the Department Diagnostic Radiology at Yale University. Early lif ...

. Subsequently he became a faculty member at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

(physics, 1961–1964),

(physics, 1964–1980),

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

(Caltech, chemistry and biology, 1980–1997) and again at Princeton (1997–), where he is the Howard A. Prior Professor of Molecular Biology, emeritus. In 1976, he participated in a science short film on the structure of the hemoglobin, featuring

Linus Pauling Linus Carl Pauling ( ; February 28, 1901August 19, 1994) was an American chemist and peace activist. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics. ''New Scientist'' called him one of the 20 gre ...

. From 1981 to 1983

Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of t ...

Carver Mead Carver Andress Mead (born 1 May 1934) is an American scientist and engineer. He currently holds the position of Gordon and Betty Moore Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), ...

and Hopfield gave a one-year course at Caltech called "The Physics of Computation". This collaboration inspired the

Computation and Neural Systems The Computation and Neural Systems (CNS) program was established at the California Institute of Technology in 1986 with the goal of training PhD students interested in exploring the relationship between the structure of neuron-like circuits/network ...

PhD program at Caltech in 1986, co-founded by Hopfield. His former PhD students include Gerald Mahan (PhD in 1964),

Bertrand Halperin Bertrand I. Halperin (born December 6, 1941) is an American physicist, former holder of the Hollis Chair of Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy at the physics department of Harvard University. In 2006, he received the Wolf Prize in Physics for hi ...

(1965),

Steven Girvin Steven Mark Girvin (born April 5, 1950) is an American physicist who is Sterling Professor and former Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Yale University. He is noted for his theoretical work on quantum many body systems such as the fractional ...

(1977),

Terry Sejnowski Terrence Joseph Sejnowski (; born 13 August 1947) is the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where he directs the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory and is the director of the Crick-Jacobs center for theoretic ...

(1978),

Erik Winfree Erik Winfree (born September 26, 1969) is an American applied computer scientist, bioengineer, and professor at California Institute of Technology. He is a leading researcher into DNA computing and DNA nanotechnology. In 1998, Winfree in colla ...

(1998),

José Onuchic José Nelson Onuchic (born Sao Paulo, Brazil) is a Brazilian and American physicist, the Harry C & Olga K Wiess Professor of Physics at Rice University. He does research in molecular biophysics, condensed matter chemistry, and genetic networks, ...

(1987),

Li Zhaoping Li Zhaoping (Chinese: 李兆平) is a Chinese neuroscientist at the University of Tübingen in Germany. She is the only woman to win the first place in CUSPEA, a 1980s annual national physics admission examination in China, during CUSPEA's 10-yea ...

(1990) and David J. C. MacKay (1992).

Work

In his doctoral work of 1958, he wrote on the interaction of

s in crystals, coining the term

polariton In physics, polaritons are bosonic quasiparticles resulting from strong coupling of electromagnetic waves (photon) with an electric or magnetic dipole-carrying excitation (state) of solid or liquid matter (such as a phonon, plasmon, or an exc ...

for a

quasiparticle In condensed matter physics, a quasiparticle is a concept used to describe a collective behavior of a group of particles that can be treated as if they were a single particle. Formally, quasiparticles and collective excitations are closely relate ...

that appears in

solid-state physics Solid-state physics is the study of rigid matter, or solids, through methods such as solid-state chemistry, quantum mechanics, crystallography, electromagnetism, and metallurgy. It is the largest branch of condensed matter physics. Solid-state phy ...

. He wrote: "The polarization field 'particles' analogous to

photon A photon () is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless particles that can ...

s will be called 'polaritons'." His polariton model is sometimes known as the

Hopfield dielectric In quantum mechanics, the Hopfield dielectric is a model of dielectric consisting of quantum harmonic oscillators interacting with the modes of the quantum electromagnetic field. The collective interaction of the charge polarization modes with t ...

. From 1959 to 1963, Hopfield and David G. Thomas investigated the exciton structure of

cadmium sulfide Cadmium sulfide is the inorganic compound with the formula CdS. Cadmium sulfide is a yellow salt.Egon Wiberg, Arnold Frederick Holleman (2001''Inorganic Chemistry'' Elsevier It occurs in nature with two different crystal structures as the rare min ...

from its reflection spectra. Their experiments and theoretical models allowed to understand the optical spectroscopy of II-VI semiconductor compounds. Condensed matter physicist Philip W. Anderson reported that John Hopfield was his "hidden collaborator" for his 1961–1970 works on the

Anderson impurity model The Anderson impurity model, named after Philip Warren Anderson, is a Hamiltonian that is used to describe magnetic impurities embedded in metals. It is often applied to the description of Kondo effect-type problems, such as heavy fermion system ...

which explained the

Kondo effect In physics, the Kondo effect describes the scattering of conduction electrons in a metal due to magnetic impurities, resulting in a characteristic change i.e. a minimum in electrical resistivity with temperature. The cause of the effect was firs ...

. Hopfield was not included as a co-author in the papers but Anderson admitted the importance of Hopfield's contribution in various of his writings. William C. Topp and Hopfield introduced the concept of norm-conserving

pseudopotential In physics, a pseudopotential or effective potential is used as an approximation for the simplified description of complex systems. Applications include atomic physics and neutron scattering. The pseudopotential approximation was first introduce ...

s in 1973. In 1974 he introduced a mechanism for error correction in

biochemical reactions Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, a ...

known as

kinetic proofreading Kinetic proofreading (or kinetic amplification) is a mechanism for error correction in biochemical reactions, proposed independently by John Hopfield (1974) and Jacques Ninio (1975). Kinetic proofreading allows enzymes to discriminate between two ...

to explain the accuracy of

DNA replication In molecular biology, DNA replication is the biological process of producing two identical replicas of DNA from one original DNA molecule. DNA replication occurs in all life, living organisms, acting as the most essential part of heredity, biolog ...

. Hopfield published his first paper in neuroscience in 1982, titled "Neural networks and physical systems with emergent collective computational abilities" where he introduced what is now known as

, a type of artificial network that can serve as a

content-addressable memory Content-addressable memory (CAM) is a special type of computer memory used in certain very-high-speed searching applications. It is also known as associative memory or associative storage and compares input search data against a table of stored ...

, made of binary neurons that can be 'on' or 'off'. He extended his formalism to continuous

activation function The activation function of a node in an artificial neural network is a function that calculates the output of the node based on its individual inputs and their weights. Nontrivial problems can be solved using only a few nodes if the activation f ...

s in 1984. The 1982 and 1984 papers represent his two most cited works. Hopfield has said that the inspiration came from his knowledge of

spin glass In condensed matter physics, a spin glass is a magnetic state characterized by randomness, besides cooperative behavior in freezing of spins at a temperature called the "freezing temperature," ''T''f. In ferromagnetic solids, component atoms' ...

es from his collaborations with P. W. Anderson. Together with

David W. Tank David W. Tank is an American physicist and neuroscientist who is the Henry L. Hillman Professor in Molecular Biology at Princeton University. Education and academic career Tank received his bachelor's degree from Case Western Reserve University ...

, Hopfield developed a method in 1985–1986 for solving discrete optimization problems based on the continuous-time dynamics using a Hopfield network with continuous activation function. The optimization problem was encoded in the interaction parameters (weights) of the network. The effective temperature of the analog system was gradually decreased, as in global optimization with

simulated annealing Simulated annealing (SA) is a probabilistic technique for approximating the global optimum of a given function. Specifically, it is a metaheuristic to approximate global optimization in a large search space for an optimization problem. ...

. Hopfield is one of the pioneers of the critical brain hypothesis, he was the first to link neural networks with

self-organized criticality Self-organized criticality (SOC) is a property of dynamical systems that have a critical point as an attractor. Their macroscopic behavior thus displays the spatial or temporal scale-invariance characteristic of the critical point of a phas ...

in reference to the Olami–Feder–Christensen model for earthquakes in 1994. In 1995, Hopfield and Andreas V. Herz showed that avalanches in neural activity follow power law distribution associated to earthquakes. The original Hopfield networks had a limited memory, this problem was addressed by Hopfield and Dimitry Krotov in 2016. Large memory storage Hopfield networks are now known as

modern Hopfield network Modern Hopfield networks (also known as Dense Associative Memories) are generalizations of the classical Hopfield networks that break the linear scaling relationship between the number of input features and the number of stored memories. This i ...

Views on artificial intelligence

In March 2023, Hopfield signed an open letter titled " Pause Giant AI Experiments", calling for a pause on the training of

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

(AI) systems more powerful than

GPT-4 Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 (GPT-4) is a multimodal large language model trained and created by OpenAI and the fourth in its series of GPT foundation models. It was launched on March 14, 2023, and made publicly available via the p ...

. The letter, signed by over 30,000 individuals including AI researchers

Yoshua Bengio Yoshua Bengio (born March 5, 1964) is a Canadian-French computer scientist, and a pioneer of artificial neural networks and deep learning. He is a professor at the Université de Montréal and scientific director of the AI institute Montreal In ...

and Stuart Russell, cited risks such as human obsolescence and society-wide loss of control. Upon being jointly awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, Hopfield revealed he was very unnerved by recent advances in AI capabilities, and said "as a physicist, I'm very unnerved by something which has no control". In a followup press conference in Princeton University, Hopfield compared AI with

discovery of nuclear fission Nuclear fission was discovered in December 1938 by chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann and physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch. Fission is a nuclear reaction or radioactive decay process in which the atomic nucleus, nucleus of a ...

, which led to

nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear exp ...

s and

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by ...

Awards and honors

Hopfield received a

Sloan Research Fellowship The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

in 1962 and as his father, he received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

(1968). Hopfield was elected as a member of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of ...

(APS) in 1969, a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

in 1973, a member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

in 1975, and a member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

in 1988. He was the President of the APS in 2006. In 1969 Hopfield and David Gilbert Thomas were awarded the Oliver E. Buckley Prize of condensed matter physics by the APS "for their joint work combining theory and experiment which has advanced the understanding of the interaction of light with solids". In 1983 he was awarded the MacArthur Foundational Prize by the

MacArthur Fellows Program The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and colloquially called the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the MacArthur Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to typically between 20 and ...

. In 1985, Hopfield received the Golden Plate Award of the

American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a nonprofit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest-achieving people in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet one ano ...

and the

Max Delbruck Prize The Max Delbruck Prize, formerly known as the Biological physics prize, is awarded by the DBIO, Division of Biological Physics of the American Physical Society, to recognize and encourage outstanding achievement in biological physics research. Th ...

in Biophysics by the APS. In 1988, he received the

Michelson–Morley Award The Michelson–Morley Award is a science award that originated from the Michelson Award that was established in 1963 by the Case Institute of Technology. It was renamed in 1968 by the newly formed Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) after the fe ...

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a Private university, private research university in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It was established in 1967 by a merger between Western Reserve University and the Case Institute of Technology. Case ...

. Hopfield received the Neural Networks Pioneer Award in 1997 by the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

(IEEE). He was awarded the

Dirac Medal The Dirac Medal or Dirac prize can refer to different awards named in honour of the physics Nobel Laureate Paul Dirac. * Dirac Medal (ICTP), awarded by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste * Dirac Medal (IOP), awar ...

of the

International Centre for Theoretical Physics The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) is a research center for physical and mathematical sciences, located in Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy. The center operates under a tripartite agreement between the Gov ...

in 2001 "for important contributions in an impressively broad spectrum of scientific subjects" including "an entirely different ollectiveorganizing principle in

olfaction The sense of smell, or olfaction, is the special sense through which smells (or odors) are perceived. The sense of smell has many functions, including detecting desirable foods, hazards, and pheromones, and plays a role in taste. In humans, ...

" and "a new principle in which neural function can take advantage of the temporal structure of the 'spiking' interneural communication". Hopfield received the

Harold Pender Award The Harold Pender Award, initiated in 1972 and named after founding Dean Harold Pender, is given by the Faculty of the School of Engineering and Applied Science of the University of Pennsylvania to an outstanding member of the engineering profess ...

in 2002 for his accomplishments in

computational neuroscience Computational neuroscience (also known as theoretical neuroscience or mathematical neuroscience) is a branch of neuroscience which employs mathematics, computer science, theoretical analysis and abstractions of the brain to understand th ...

and

neural engineering Neural engineering (also known as neuroengineering) is a discipline within biomedical engineering that uses engineering techniques to understand, repair, replace, or enhance neural systems. Neural engineers are uniquely qualified to solve design ...

from the

Moore School of Electrical Engineering The Moore School of Electrical Engineering was a school at the University of Pennsylvania. The school was integrated into the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science. The Moore School came into existence as a resul ...

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

. He received the

Albert Einstein World Award of Science The Albert Einstein World Award for Science is an annual award given by the World Cultural Council "as a means of recognition and encouragement for scientific and technological research and development", with special consideration for researche ...

in 2005 in the field of life sciences. In 2007, he gave the Fritz London Memorial Lecture at

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

, titled "How Do We Think So Fast? From Neurons to Brain Computation". Hopfield received the

IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award The IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award is a Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers#Technical field awards, Technical Field Award established by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Board of Directors in 2004. This award is ...

in 2009 for his contributions in understanding information processing in biological systems. In 2012 he was awarded the Swartz Prize by the

Society for Neuroscience The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) is a professional society, headquartered in Washington, D.C., for basic scientists and physicians around the world whose research is focused on the study of the brain and nervous system. It is especially well k ...

. In 2019 he was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics by the

Franklin Institute The Franklin Institute is a science museum and a center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and wikt:statesman, statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin ...

, and in 2022 he shared the

Boltzmann Medal The Boltzmann Medal (or Boltzmann Award) is a prize awarded to physicists that obtain new results concerning statistical mechanics; it is named after the celebrated physicist Ludwig Boltzmann. The Boltzmann Medal is awarded once every three years ...

award in statistical physics with

Deepak Dhar Deepak Dhar (born 30 October 1951) is an Indian theoretical physicist known for his research on statistical physics and stochastic processes. In 2022, he became the first Indian to be awarded the Boltzmann Medal, the highest recognition in stat ...

. He was jointly awarded the 2024

with Geoffrey E. Hinton for "foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks". In 2025 he was awarded the

Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Queen most commonly refers to: * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a kingdom * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen (band), a British rock band Queen or QUEEN may also refer to: Monarchy * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * ...

jointly with

Bill Dally William James Dally (born August 17, 1960) is an American computer scientist and educator. He is the chief scientist and senior vice president at Nvidia and was previously a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford Un ...

, Geoffrey E. Hinton,

Yann LeCun Yann André Le Cun ( , ; usually spelled LeCun; born 8 July 1960) is a French-American computer scientist working primarily in the fields of machine learning, computer vision, mobile robotics and computational neuroscience. He is the Silver Pr ...

Jen-Hsun Huang Jen-Hsun "Jensen" Huang ( zh, t=黃仁勳, poj=N̂g Jîn-hun, hp=Huáng Rénxūn; born February 17, 1963) is a Taiwanese and American businessman, electrical engineer, and philanthropist who is the president, co-founder, and chief executive of ...

and

Fei-Fei Li Fei-Fei Li (; born in Beijing, China, July 3, 1976) is a Chinese-American computer scientist known for her pioneering work in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in computer vision. She is best known for establishing ImageNet, the dat ...

for the development of modern machine learning.Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering 2025
/ref>

References

External links

User:John J. Hopfield – Scholarpedia
* . This review traces the trajectory of solid state physics through Hopfield's own experiences. * (Auto-biographical essay) * P. Charbonneau,
History of RSB Interview: John J. Hopfield
', transcript of an oral history conducted 2020 by Patrick Charbonneau and Francesco Zamponi, History of RSB Project, CAPHÉS, École normale supérieure, Paris, 2020, 21 p. https://doi.org/11280/5fd45598 {{DEFAULTSORT:Hopfield, John American biophysicists 1933 births Living people Albert Einstein World Award of Science Laureates American artificial intelligence researchers MacArthur Fellows Fellows of the American Physical Society Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences California Institute of Technology faculty Princeton University faculty University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Cornell University alumni Swarthmore College alumni 21st-century American physicists 20th-century American physicists 21st-century American biologists American people of Polish descent Place of birth missing (living people) Members of the American Philosophical Society Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize winners Presidents of the American Physical Society Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute) laureates 20th-century American biologists American Nobel laureates Nobel laureates in Physics Recipients of the Boltzmann Medal