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?

[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."

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

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

Scientists find a boulder weighing 2,645,547 pounds that was washed inland by an enormous tsunami - Earth.com

"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?"

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

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

With a housing crisis going on, should we make owning properties illegal?

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

You can have your cake and eat it too

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

What shouldn't you Google?

There you go.^†

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

When he's standing, in front of you

Nintendo Switch 2 sets all-time launch record for hardware in the US, beating PS4 - Video Games Chronicle

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

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.

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

Did you use the internet during the DOS era? Can you describe your experience? How were images displayed on the black screen when everything was just text-based commands?

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

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:

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

Precision Spectroscopy Reaffirms Gap Between Theory and Experiment - American Physical Society

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

Whatever.

[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.

Have you been with a stranger yet?

(Mumbles of assent)

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

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

This Case Forced Me to Completely Rethink How I Handle the Switch 2 - Gizmodo

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

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

Whatever.

Skulls once subject to racist study in Germany are laid to rest in New Orleans - NPR