The computation of nature: from the Ising model to generative learning

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, which came as a surprise to many people. In this introductory article, we will explore their major contributions from the perspective of statistical physics, starting with the Ising model. This includes the Hopfield model, Boltzmann machines, unsupervised learning, and modern generative models. The article will also review the exciting collaboration between statistical physics and machine learning at the end of the last century and provide a brief outlook on the future directions of the interdisciplinary field between physics and machine learning.