Professor David Thouless

Professor David Thouless 1934-present
Awarded (jointly) the Nobel Prize for Physics 2016

• British condensed matter physicist
• Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Birmingham 1965-1978
• Published seminal work that indicated that matter can have an internal geometry or ‘topology’, which can have measurable effects on their properties 1973

Scottish-born David Thouless graduated from Cambridge University in 1955. He was Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Birmingham from 1965 to 1978, where he began his collaboration with Michael Kosterlitz. Since 1980, he has been Professor of Physics at the University of Washington in Seattle, where his main interests have been in the Quantum Hall effect, in vortices in superfluids, and in other problems related to topological quantum numbers.