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John Hopfield

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For his father, the Polish-American spectroscopist, see John J. Hopfield (spectroscopist).

John Hopfield
Hopfield in 2016
Born
John Joseph Hopfield

(1933-07-15) July 15, 1933 (age 91)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Alma materSwarthmore College (AB)
Cornell University (PhD)
Known forHopfield network
Modern Hopfield network
Hopfield dielectric
Polariton
Kinetic proofreading
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
Molecular biology
Complex systems
Neuroscience
InstitutionsBell Labs
Princeton University
University of California, Berkeley
California Institute of Technology
ThesisA quantum-mechanical theory of the contribution of excitons to the complex dielectric constant of crystals (1958)
Doctoral advisorAlbert Overhauser
Doctoral studentsSteven Girvin
Bertrand Halperin
David J. C. MacKay
José Onuchic
Terry Sejnowski
Erik Winfree

John Joseph Hopfield (born July 15, 1933)[1] 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.

In 2024 Hopfield, along with Geoffrey Hinton, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their foundational contributions to machine learning, particularly through their work on artificial neural networks.[2][3] He has been awarded various major physics awards for his work in multidisciplinary fields including condensed matter physics, statistical physics and biophysics.

Biography

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Early life and education

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John Joseph Hopfield was born in 1933 in Chicago[1] to physicists John Joseph Hopfield and Helen (Staff) Hopfield.[4][5]

Hopfield received a Bachelor of Arts with a major in physics from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania in 1954 and a Doctor of Philosophy in physics from Cornell University in 1958.[1] His doctoral dissertation was titled "A quantum-mechanical theory of the contribution of excitons to the complex dielectric constant of crystals".[6] His doctoral advisor was Albert Overhauser.[1]

Career

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He spent two years in the theory group at Bell Laboratories working on the structure of hemoglobin,[1][4] and subsequently was a faculty member at University of California, Berkeley (physics, 1961–1964),[3] Princeton University (physics, 1964–1980),[3] California Institute of Technology (chemistry and biology, 1980–1997)[3] and again at Princeton (1997–),[3][1] where he is the Howard A. Prior Professor of Molecular Biology, emeritus.[7] In 1986 he was a co-founder of the Computation and Neural Systems PhD program at Caltech.[8]

Work

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In his doctoral work of 1958, he wrote on the interaction of excitons in crystals, coining the term polariton for a quasiparticle that appears in solid-state physics.[9][10] He wrote: "The polarization field 'particles' analogous to photons will be called 'polaritons'."[10] His polariton model is sometimes known as the Hopfield dielectric.[11]

In 1974 he introduced a mechanism for error correction in biochemical reactions known as kinetic proofreading to explain the accuracy of DNA replication.[12][13]

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 Hopfield network, a type of artificial network that can serve as a content-addressable memory, made of binary neurons that can be 'on' or 'off'.[14][4] The original network had a limited memory, this problem was addressed by Hopfield and Dimitry Krotov in 2016.[15][16] Large memory storage Hopfield networks are now known as modern Hopfield networks.[citation needed]

Together with David W. Tank, Hopfield developed a method in 1985–1986[17][18] for solving discrete optimization problems based on the continuous-time dynamics using an analog model. 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.[15]

Awards and honors

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In 1969 Hopfield and David Gilbert Thomas were awarded the Oliver E. Buckley Prize of condensed matter physics "for their joint work combining theory and experiment which has advanced the understanding of the interaction of light with solids".[19]

He was awarded the Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in 2001 “for important contributions in an impressively broad spectrum of scientific subjects"[20][21] including "an entirely different [collective] organizing principle in olfaction" and "a new principle in which neural function can take advantage of the temporal structure of the ‘spiking’ interneural communication".[21]

Hopfield was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1973, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1975, and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1988.[22][23][24] In 1985, Hopfield received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.[25] He received the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in 2005 in the field of life sciences.[26] He was the President of the American Physical Society in 2006.[27] Hopfield shared the 2022 Boltzmann Medal award in statistical physics with Deepak Dhar.[28] In 2023, he was named a Highly Ranked Scholar by ScholarGPS for lifetime. [29]

He was jointly awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics with Geoffrey E. Hinton for "foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks".[30][31]

Doctoral students

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His former PhD students include Bertrand Halperin (PhD in 1965), Steven Girvin (1977), Terry Sejnowski (1978), Erik Winfree (1998), José Onuchic (1987), Li Zhaoping (1989), Dawei W. Dong (1991), David J. C. MacKay (1992), and Brooke P. Anderson (1993).[32][33]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f "Hopfield, John J." Physics History Network American Institute of Physics. Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  2. ^ "Press release: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2024". NobelPrize.org. Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  3. ^ a b c d e Taylor, D.B.; et al. (October 8, 2024), "Nobel Physics Prize Awarded for Pioneering A.I. Research by 2 Scientists", The New York Times, retrieved October 8, 2024
  4. ^ a b c Lindsay, Grace (March 4, 2021). Models of the Mind: How Physics, Engineering and Mathematics Have Shaped Our Understanding of the Brain. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4729-6645-2.
  5. ^ "American Men of Science: A Biographical Directory". Science Press. 1966.
  6. ^ "A quantum-mechanical theory of the contribution of excitons to the complex dielectric constant of crystals". proquest.com. Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  7. ^ Office of Communications (October 8, 2024). "Princeton's John Hopfield receives Nobel Prize in physics". Princeton University. Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  8. ^ "Caltech Celebrates 30 Years of its Computation and Neural Systems Option | Caltech Alumni". Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  9. ^ Hopfield, J. J. (December 1, 1958). "Theory of the Contribution of Excitons to the Complex Dielectric Constant of Crystals". Physical Review. 112 (5): 1555–1567. Bibcode:1958PhRv..112.1555H. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.112.1555. ISSN 0031-899X.
  10. ^ a b Agranovich, Vladimir M. (February 12, 2009). Excitations in Organic Solids. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-155291-5.
  11. ^ Huttner, B.; Barnett, S. M. (1992). "Dispersion and Loss in a Hopfield Dielectric". Europhysics Letters. 18 (6): 487. Bibcode:1992EL.....18..487H. doi:10.1209/0295-5075/18/6/003. ISSN 0295-5075.
  12. ^ Hopfield, J. J. (1974). "Kinetic Proofreading: A New Mechanism for Reducing Errors in Biosynthetic Processes Requiring High Specificity". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 71 (10): 4135–4139. Bibcode:1974PNAS...71.4135H. doi:10.1073/pnas.71.10.4135. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 434344. PMID 4530290.
  13. ^ Flyvbjerg, Henrik; Jülicher, Frank; Ormos, Pal; David, Francois (July 1, 2003). Physics of Bio-Molecules and Cells: Les Houches Session LXXV, 2–27 July 2001. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-3-540-45701-5.
  14. ^ Hopfield, J J (April 1982). "Neural networks and physical systems with emergent collective computational abilities". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 79 (8): 2554–2558. Bibcode:1982PNAS...79.2554H. doi:10.1073/pnas.79.8.2554. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 346238. PMID 6953413.
  15. ^ a b The Nobel Committee for Physics (October 8, 2024). "Scientifc Background to the Nobel Prize in Physics 2024" (PDF). The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
  16. ^ Krotov, Dmitry; Hopfield, John J. (2016). "Dense Associative Memory for Pattern Recognition". Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems. 29. Curran Associates, Inc. arXiv:1606.01164.
  17. ^ Hopfield, J. J.; Tank, D. W. (July 1, 1985). ""Neural" computation of decisions in optimization problems". Biological Cybernetics. 52 (3): 141–152. doi:10.1007/BF00339943. ISSN 1432-0770. PMID 4027280.
  18. ^ Hopfield, John J.; Tank, David W. (August 8, 1986). "Computing with Neural Circuits: A Model". Science. 233 (4764): 625–633. Bibcode:1986Sci...233..625H. doi:10.1126/science.3755256. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 3755256.
  19. ^ "Honors and Award Winners". American Physical Society. Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  20. ^ "Dirac Medallist 2001 | ICTP". www.ictp.it. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  21. ^ a b "Princeton Physicist Garners Dirac Medal". Physics Today. 54 (10): 85. October 1, 2001. Bibcode:2001PhT....54S..85.. doi:10.1063/1.1420565. ISSN 0031-9228.
  22. ^ "John J. Hopfield". www.nasonline.org.
  23. ^ "John Joseph Hopfield". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. October 12, 2023.
  24. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org.
  25. ^ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
  26. ^ "Albert Einstein World Award of Science 2005". Archived from the original on October 23, 2013. Retrieved August 13, 2013.
  27. ^ "John Hopfield, Array of Contemporary Physicists". Archived from the original on October 19, 2013. Retrieved October 19, 2013.
  28. ^ "STATPHYS28". statphys28.org. Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  29. ^ ScholarGPS Profile: John J. Hopfield
  30. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physics 2024". Nobel Media AB. Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  31. ^ Nobel Prize (September 11, 2024). Announcement of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. Retrieved October 8, 2024 – via YouTube.
  32. ^ John Joseph Hopfield at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  33. ^ Hopfield, John Joseph. "neurotree".
[edit]
Scholia has a profile for John Hopfield (Q391237).


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