2016 Nobel Prize in Physics

The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 4 October 2016.

The citation

The citation reads: "for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter".

The laureates

David J. Thouless was born in 1934 in Bearsden, United Kingdom, and is affiliated with the University of Washington, Seattle. F. Duncan M. Haldane was born in 1951 in London, United Kingdom, and is affiliated with Princeton University, Princeton. J. Michael Kosterlitz was born in 1943 in Aberdeen, United Kingdom, and is affiliated with Brown University, Providence.

Why it matters

The three British-born physicists used topology, the mathematics of shapes, to explain unusual states of matter. All three now work in the United States.

The prize

The prize is worth 8 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.