Three British scientists have won this year’s Nobel Prize for physics for their work on exotic states of matter.
Three British scientists have won this year’s Nobel Prize for physics for their work on exotic states of matter.
David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and MIchael Kosterlitz, will share the prize.
In Stockholm the Nobel Committee said this year’s winners had ‘‘opened the door on an unknown world.’‘
Announcing the result, Goran Hansson, Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said:
“The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics, with one half to David J. Thouless and the other half to F. Duncan Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz for theoretical discoveries of Topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.’‘
The three laureates used topology, a branch of mathematics from the Greek ‘the study of place’, to redefine what is thought possible in materials.
It’s hoped their theoretical research will pave the way for quantum computers and other future technologies.