Son Nguyen to Present Nobel Prize Symposium Talk The visiting assistant professor of physics will discuss this year’s Nobel Prize in physics on Thursday, Nov. 7.

By Brian Laubscher
October 25, 2024

Son Nguyen, visiting assistant professor of physics at Washington and Lee University, will present on the 2024 Nobel Prize in physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for their work on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The talk is free and open to the public and will be held at noon on Thursday, Nov. 7, in room 128 of the Harte Center for Teaching and Learning, located in Leyburn Library. Snacks and refreshments will be provided.

Hopfield and Hinton were recognized for their discoveries and inventions that helped to create the building blocks of machine learning. Hopfield created an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data. Hinton invented a method that can autonomously find properties in data and performs tasks such as identifying specific elements in pictures.

“Hopfield and Hinton’s groundbreaking works, drawing on insights from biological systems and physics models, laid the foundation for machine learning and artificial intelligence,” said Nguyen. “These fields have profoundly transformed society in several ways and become part of our daily lives. Hopfield and Hinton’s research perfectly demonstrates how interdisciplinary ideas from seemingly distant fields can lead to innovative solutions. I hope the two Nobel laureates inspire our community solutions to foster collaboration from diverse disciplines to solve complex problems.”

Hopfield holds a Bachelor of Arts in physics from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in physics from Cornell. He was a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, California Institute of Technology and Princeton University, where he serves as a professor emeritus.

Hinton, often referred to as the “Godfather of AI,” earned a Bachelor of Arts in experimental psychology from the University of Cambridge (U.K.) and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh (U.K.). He served on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Toronto (Canada), where he serves as a professor emeritus. Hinton also worked on AI technology for Google and founded the Vector Institute, a private nonprofit AI research institute in Toronto, Canada.

Learn more about all of the 2024 Nobel Prize winners here.