Geoffrey Hinton
Born 1947 · Age 78
British–Canadian cognitive psychologist and computer scientist, pioneer of artificial neural networks and deep learning. Known as the 'Godfather of AI'. University of Toronto professor emeritus; Google Brain researcher (2013–2023); cofounder of Vector Institute; 2018 Turing Award laureate and 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics laureate.
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Life & Career Timeline
Born in Wimbledon, England
Geoffrey Everest Hinton was born in Wimbledon, London, England.
Completed schooling at Clifton College (approx.)
Educated at Clifton College in Bristol (secondary schooling completed around this time).
Sustained back injury
Injured his back at age 19; has lifelong sitting pain as a result.
Enrolled at King's College, Cambridge
Began undergraduate studies at King's College, Cambridge, switching between fields before specialising.
Graduated BA in Experimental Psychology, Cambridge
Earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in experimental psychology from the University of Cambridge.
One-year carpentry apprenticeship
Spent a year apprenticing in carpentry after graduating before returning to academia.
Postdoctoral work at University of Sussex and MRC Applied Psychology Unit
Began postdoctoral research appointments in Britain after completing his PhD.
Awarded PhD in Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh
Completed PhD (thesis 'Relaxation and Its Role in Vision') supervised by Christopher Longuet-Higgins.
Moved to the United States for research (UC San Diego)
Took a research position at the University of California, San Diego after difficulties getting funding in Britain.
Faculty appointment at Carnegie Mellon University (approx.)
Served as a faculty member in CMU's Computer Science department for five years (dates approx. early–mid 1980s).
Co-invented Boltzmann machines
Co‑authored the seminal paper describing Boltzmann machines with David Ackley and Terrence Sejnowski (1985).
Published influential backpropagation paper (Rumelhart, Hinton, Williams)
Co‑authored the highly cited 1986 Nature paper that popularised backpropagation for multi‑layer neural nets.
Became CIFAR Fellow (AI program inaugural cohort)
Appointed as a Fellow in CIFAR's first Artificial Intelligence, Robotics & Society research program upon arrival in Canada.
Joined University of Toronto and CIFAR fellow
Appointed to University of Toronto's Department of Computer Science and became a fellow in CIFAR's first AI program.
Elected Fellow of the AAAI
Named a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).
Death of first wife, Rosalind Zalin
His first wife, Rosalind Zalin, died of ovarian cancer.
Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC)
Recognised by the Royal Society of Canada for contributions to neural nets and cognitive modelling.
Married Jacqueline 'Jackie' Ford
Married Jacqueline Ford (later died in 2018).
Set up the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit (founding director)
Spent roughly three years (1998–2001) setting up the Gatsby Unit at University College London.
Elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)
Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in recognition of his work on learning and neural networks.
Received Rumelhart Prize; honorary DSc from Edinburgh
Awarded the inaugural David E. Rumelhart Prize and an honorary Doctor of Science from University of Edinburgh.
International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Elected an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society.
Launched CIFAR program 'Neural Computation and Adaptive Perception' (NCAP)
Proposed and launched a new CIFAR research program (often called NCAP / Learning in Machines & Brains) and later led it for about a decade.
Received IJCAI Award for Research Excellence
Honoured with the IJCAI Award for Research Excellence (lifetime-achievement award).
Published 'Unsupervised learning of image transformations' (2007)
Coauthored an unsupervised learning paper on image transformations (CVPR/ICLR era work).
Developed t-SNE with Laurens van der Maaten
Published the t‑SNE method for visualizing high‑dimensional data (Journal of Machine Learning Research 2008).
Delivered Deep Belief Nets tutorial (2009)
Provided a major 3‑hour tutorial on Deep Belief Nets (teaching/conference milestone; materials widely circulated).
Received Herzberg Canada Gold Medal; honorary DSc from Sussex
Awarded the NSERC Herzberg Gold Medal for Science and Engineering and an honorary doctorate from the University of Sussex.
Co-founded DNNresearch Inc.
Co‑founded DNNresearch with graduate students Alex Krizhevsky and Ilya Sutskever based on University of Toronto research.
Taught Coursera course 'Neural Networks for Machine Learning'
Delivered a free online Coursera course on Neural Networks for Machine Learning, increasing public reach of deep learning concepts.
Mentored Alex Krizhevsky and Ilya Sutskever leading to AlexNet
Supervised graduate students Alex Krizhevsky and Ilya Sutskever; collaborative work produced AlexNet and later led to DNNresearch.
Published AlexNet and won ImageNet 2012
AlexNet (Krizhevsky, Sutskever, Hinton) achieved a breakthrough in image recognition at ImageNet 2012 and was presented at NIPS (2012).
Joined Google Brain (VP & Engineering Fellow; part‑time)
From 2013 began dividing his time between the University of Toronto and Google, taking a leadership/research role at Google Brain.
Honorary doctorate from Université de Sherbrooke
Awarded an honorary doctorate by the Université de Sherbrooke.
Google acquired DNNresearch (DNNresearch exit)
Google acquired DNNresearch Inc. for $44 million and Hinton planned to divide time between Google and University of Toronto.
Received IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award (date listed 2014)
Received the IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award (listed among his major awards).
Elected International Member of the US National Academy of Engineering
Elected an international member of NAE for contributions to neural networks and applications.
Received James Clerk Maxwell Medal and BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award
Won the IEEE/RSE Wolfson James Clerk Maxwell Award and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in ICT.
Co-founded the Vector Institute; became Chief Scientific Advisor
Co‑founded Toronto's Vector Institute for AI and served as its chief scientific advisor.
Called for international ban on lethal autonomous weapons (public stance)
Publicly advocated for an international ban on lethal autonomous weapons, citing risks of AI in military contexts.
Published capsule neural networks papers (Oct/Nov 2017)
Published two open‑access papers on capsule neural networks proposing new architectures for object representation.
Awarded the ACM A.M. Turing Award (with Bengio and LeCun)
Received the 2018 Turing Award (the 'Nobel of computing') for conceptual and engineering advances in deep neural networks.
Made Companion of the Order of Canada (CC)
Named a Companion of the Order of Canada in recognition of his scientific contributions.
Received Dickson Prize in Science
Awarded the Dickson Prize in Science by Carnegie Mellon University.
Introduced Forward‑Forward algorithm at NeurIPS 2022
Presented a new learning algorithm ('Forward‑Forward') proposing two forward passes to replace backpropagation's forward‑backward pass.
Princess of Asturias Award (with LeCun, Bengio, Hassabis)
Shared the Princess of Asturias Award in Scientific Research for contributions to AI and deep learning.
Named ACM Fellow; elected to US National Academy of Sciences; Lifeboat Guardian Award
In 2023 he was named an ACM Fellow, elected an International Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and received the Lifeboat Foundation Guardian Award (with Ilya Sutskever).
Numerous high-profile media and conference talks (Mar–Jun 2023)
Gave multiple interviews and talks (CBS March 25, NYT May 1 feature, BBC, CNN, Collision Conference June 2023) warning about AI risks.
Shifted public stance: warned of AGI risks and economic impacts
Announced regret and concern about AI's risks, warned about technological unemployment and existential threats, advocated for safety research/regulation.
Resigned from Google to speak freely about AI risks
Publicly announced his resignation from Google in May 2023 in order to speak openly about the risks of AI.
Awarded Nobel Prize in Physics (joint with John Hopfield)
Joint recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for foundational discoveries and inventions enabling machine learning with artificial neural networks.
Received VinFuture Prize Grand Award
Awarded the VinFuture Prize grand award alongside prominent AI researchers for contributions to deep learning.
Awarded Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (joint)
Named a recipient of the 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering jointly with other leaders in AI and computing.
Received King Charles III Coronation Medal
Awarded the King Charles III Coronation Medal (listed among honours received).
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