 In 1982 , physicist John Hopfield was able to prove that a form of neural network ( now called a " Hopfield net " ) could learn and process information in a completely new way . Around the same time , David Rumelhart popularized a new method for training neural networks called " backpropagation " ( discovered years earlier by Paul Werbos ) . These two discoveries revived the field of connectionism which had been largely abandoned since 1970 . 
 In 1982 , physicist John Hopfield was able to prove that a form of neural network ( now called a " Hopfield net " ) could learn and process information in a completely new way . Around the same time , David Rumelhart popularized a new method for training neural networks called " backpropagation " ( discovered years earlier by Paul Werbos ) . These two discoveries revived the field of connectionism which <a href='been_done' title='1'><mark>had</mark></a> been largely abandoned since 1970 . 
In 1982 , physicist John Hopfield was able to prove that a form of neural network ( now called a " Hopfield net " ) could learn and process information in a completely new way . Around the same time , David Rumelhart popularized a new method fa training neural networks called " backpropagation " ( discovered yrs earlier by Paul Werbos ) . These 2 discoveries revived the field of connectionism which done been largely abandoned since 1970 .