Scientists John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning within artificial neural networks, the award-giving body said on Tuesday.

"This year's two Nobel Laureates in physics have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today's powerful machine learning," said the Nobel committee.

Hopfield's research is carried out at Princeton University, and Hinton works at the University of Toronto.

Ellen Moons, a member of the Nobel committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said the two laureates "used fundamental concepts from statistical physics to design artificial neural networks that function as associative memories and find patterns in large data sets."

She said that such networks have been used to advance research in physics and "have also become part of our daily lives, for instance in facial recognition and language translation."

The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded a day after two American scientists won the medicine prize for their discovery of microRNA.

Three scientists won last year's physics Nobel for providing the first split-second glimpse into the superfast world of spinning electrons, a field that could one day lead to better electronics or disease diagnoses.

The physics prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the award's creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. It has been awarded 117 times to 225 Nobel Prize laureates between 1901 and 2023. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.

(With input from AP)