David J. Thouless
David J. Thouless | |
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![]() Thouless in May 1995 | |
Born | David James Thouless 21 September 1934 |
Nationality | British |
Citizenship | United States |
Alma mater | University of Cambridge (BA) Cornell University (PhD) |
Known for | |
Awards |
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Scientific career | |
Fields | Condensed matter physics |
Institutions | |
Thesis | The application of perturbation methods to the theory of nuclear matter (1958) |
Doctoral advisor | Hans Bethe |
David James Thouless FRS[1] (/ˈdeɪvɪd ˈdʒeɪmz ˈθaʊlɛs/, born 21 September 1934)[4] is a Scottish-American condensed-matter physicist.[5] He is a winner of the Wolf Prize and laureate of the 2016 Nobel Prize for physics along with F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.[6][7]
Education
Thouless was educated at Winchester College and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He obtained his PhD at Cornell University,[8][4] where Hans Bethe was his doctoral advisor.[9]
Career and research
Thouless was a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, and professor of mathematical physics at University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom from 1965-1978,[10] before becoming a professor of physics at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1980.[10] Thouless has made many theoretical contributions to the understanding of extended systems of atoms and electrons, and of nucleons. His work includes work on superconductivity phenomena, properties of nuclear matter, and excited collective motions within nuclei.
Selected publications
- J. M. Kosterlitz & D. J. Thouless, "Ordering, metastability and phase transitions in two-dimensional systems", Journal of Physics C: Solid State Physics, Vol. 6 pages 1181-1203 (1973)
- D. Thouless, M. Kohmoto, M. Nightingale & M. den Nijs, "Quantized Hall Conductance in a Two-Dimensional Periodic Potential", Phys. Rev. Lett. 49, 405 (1982).
- Topological Quantum Numbers in Nonrelativistic Physics, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte Ltd, 1998
- The quantum mechanics of many-body systems (Pure and applied physics series), Academic Press, 1972
Awards and honours
Thouless was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1979,[1] a Fellow of the American Physical Society,[when?] a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,[when?] and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.[when?] Among his awards are the Wolf Prize for Physics (1990),[11] the Paul Dirac Medal of the Institute of Physics (1993), the Lars Onsager Prize[12] of the American Physical Society (2000), and the Nobel Prize in Physics (2016).
References
- ^ a b c Anon (1979). "Professor David Thouless FRS". royalsociety.org. London: Royal Society. Archived from the original on 2015-11-17. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
“All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” --Template:Wayback
- ^ Devlin, Hannah; Sample, Ian (2016-10-04). "British trio win Nobel prize in physics 2016 for work on exotic states of matter – live". the Guardian. Retrieved 2016-10-04.
- ^ Sturrock, Laura (5 October 2016). "Bearsden scientist is awarded Nobel prize in Physics". Kirkintilloch Herald. Retrieved 6 October 2016.
- ^ a b THOULESS. "THOULESS, Prof. David James". Who's Who. Vol. 2016 (online Oxford University Press ed.). Oxford: A & C Black.
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ignored (help) (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) (subscription required) - ^ Template:Wayback, Los Alamos National Laboratory
- ^ The international who's who 1991-92
- ^ The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016
- ^ Thouless, David James (1958). The application of perturbation methods to the theory of nuclear matter (PhD thesis). Cornell University. OCLC 745509629.
- ^ From Nuclei to Stars: Festschrift in Honor of Gerald E. Brown
- ^ a b "Two former Birmingham scientists awarded Nobel Prize for Physics". University of Birmingham. 4 October 2016. Retrieved 4 October 2016.
- ^ David J. Thouless Winner of Wolf Prize in Physics - 1990 on the official website of Wolf Foundation
- ^ David James Thouless, University of Washington: 2000 Lars Onsager Prize Recipient
- 1934 births
- Living people
- People educated at Winchester College
- Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge
- Cornell University alumni
- People from Bearsden
- Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
- American physicists
- American nuclear physicists
- University of Washington faculty
- Wolf Prize in Physics laureates
- Fellows of the Royal Society
- Maxwell Medal and Prize recipients
- Academics of the University of Birmingham
- Nobel laureates in Physics
- American Nobel laureates