STOCKHOLM, October 8. /TASS/. US physicist John Hopfield and Canadian computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton won the Nobel Prize in Physics for "foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks," the Nobel Committee of the Karolinska Institute announced on Tuesday.

While Hopfield, 91, created a structure that can store and reconstruct information, Hinton, 76, invented a method "that can independently discover properties in data and which has become important for the large artificial neural networks now in use," the Committee explained.

"Although computers cannot think, machines can now mimic functions such as memory and learning. This year's laureates in physics have helped make this possible," it added.