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David J. Thouless

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David J. Thouless
Thouless in May 1995
Born
David James Thouless

(1934-09-21) 21 September 1934 (age 89)
Bearsden, Scotland[3]
NationalityBritish
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge (BA)
Cornell University (PhD)
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsCondensed matter physics
Institutions
ThesisThe application of perturbation methods to the theory of nuclear matter (1958)
Doctoral advisorHans 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

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

  1. ^ 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
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ Sturrock, Laura (5 October 2016). "Bearsden scientist is awarded Nobel prize in Physics". Kirkintilloch Herald. Retrieved 6 October 2016.
  4. ^ a b THOULESS. "THOULESS, Prof. David James". Who's Who. Vol. 2016 (online Oxford University Press ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |othernames= ignored (help) (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) (subscription required)
  5. ^ Template:Wayback, Los Alamos National Laboratory
  6. ^ The international who's who 1991-92
  7. ^ The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016
  8. ^ Thouless, David James (1958). The application of perturbation methods to the theory of nuclear matter (PhD thesis). Cornell University. OCLC 745509629.
  9. ^ From Nuclei to Stars: Festschrift in Honor of Gerald E. Brown
  10. ^ a b "Two former Birmingham scientists awarded Nobel Prize for Physics". University of Birmingham. 4 October 2016. Retrieved 4 October 2016.
  11. ^ David J. Thouless Winner of Wolf Prize in Physics - 1990 on the official website of Wolf Foundation
  12. ^ David James Thouless, University of Washington: 2000 Lars Onsager Prize Recipient
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