John J. Hopfield published “Neural networks and physical systems with emergent collective computational abilities” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, volume 79, issue 8, pages 2554 to 2558, in 1982. The verified open-access record on PubMed Central confirms the title, author, journal, volume, issue, pages, and year. Only the year is firmly fixed for the milestone date.
The paper showed that a network of many simple, interconnected units could exhibit useful computation as a collective property of the whole system rather than of any single unit. In particular, it demonstrated content-addressable memory, where the network settles into a stable state that recovers a stored pattern from a partial or noisy cue, using an analogy to energy minimization in physical systems.
By framing neural networks in the rigorous language of physics, Hopfield brought a wave of physicists and mathematicians into the field at a low point for AI, helping spark the 1980s revival of neural network research. The lasting importance of this work was recognized in 2024 when Hopfield shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Geoffrey Hinton.