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?

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.

There you go.^†

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

What are the ten cars that make me no longer feel inferior?

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

(Mumbles of assent)

[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."

I wore a Trump hat to a doctor’s visit. The doctor made a strange comment, he was obviously on the opposite political point that make me uncomfortable. What shall I do on my next visit?

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

Whatever.

What were Sauron's powers in The Lord of the Rings (LOTR)? Did he have any magic or anything like that?

Whatever.

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

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

Was Michael Jackson really an innocent person?

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

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

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

Why do narcissists keep calling on the phone after years of separation?

(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?

Did you know that we white women prefer Black boyfriends?

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."

"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?"

What is one thing you've learned from life?

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

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:

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

Ancient fossils show how the last mass extinction forever scrambled the ocean’s biodiversity - The Conversation

[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.

When he's standing, in front of you

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

Nvidia CEO sends blunt 7-word message on quantum computing - TheStreet