How did a computer scientist such as Geoffrey Hinton manage to win a Nobel Prize in physics when computer science already has its own Nobel Prize equivalent in the Turing Awards?

In December 1973, when Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, comedian Tom Lehrer dropped his mic and stamped on it—satire had just died.

… then anything is possible. There’s no rule that a Nobel Prize has to make sense.^*

[Older voice] "Mmm. What about Hinton, he's widely regarded? Nobody got fired for buying IBM"

Is there an MBTI personality that is more or less likely to handle stress?

(Mumbles of assent)

Fortunately, we are privy to the discussion that led up to this:

In awarding prizes, the Nobel Committees often seem only marginally more competent than MTG is at explaining meteorology. And if they can give a literature prize for lyrics like:

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There you go.^†

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

When he's standing, in front of you

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"Didn't he do something with Boltzmann in it? That sounds physics-y. RBMs and stuff, eh?"

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

"Hey guys, AI is pretty big so let's centre our prizes on it this year. We can get some attention, and it's all about advertising, at the end of the day, isn't it?"

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"Naah, Linnainmaa is a Finn. Can't give it to a bloody Finnish mathematician. Let's go for drinks. Brännvin anyone?"

Whatever.

Whatever.

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(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

"Good idea, but how can we wangle something that says 'Physics'?"

[Younger voice] "But wait a minute, Ising-Lenz goes back to the 1920's. And didn't Hinton plagiarise rather a lot? He also didn't invent modern backprop, did he, that's Linnainmaa? And Amari preceded Hopfield, too. That's not a good look."

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"Where can we shoehorn it in? Chemistry is easy 'cos AlphaFold; but what about physics? A bit more challenging, right?"

"Good point, I'm sure we can swing it. And let's tack on Hopfield while we're about it."

^* Fibiger got the 1926 Medicine prize for the discovery of Spiroptera carcinoma (Don’t ask).

How long will it take for the USA to effectively remove it self from the global economy that many US politicians especially Donald Trump seems to dislike? Will this isolationist policy last after his presidency or will it be quickly dropped?

They then move on to selectively provide their own version of history. But hey, it’s OK. They wanted controversy, didn’t they? Whatever.

A fly on the wall at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

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You can have your cake and eat it too

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

[The basic structure of artificial neural networks] has close similarities with spin models in statistical physics applied to magnetism or alloy theory. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics recognizes research exploiting this connection to make breakthrough methodological advances in the field of ANN.

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