David J. Thouless

David James Thouless FRS (/ˈθaʊlɛs/; 21 September 1934 – 6 April 2019) was a British physicist.^[6] He is a winner of the Wolf Prize and the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics along with F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.^[7][8][9]

David Thouless FRS
David Thouless in 2016
Born	David James Thouless (1934-09-21)21 September 1934 Bearsden, Scotland[1]
Died	6 April 2019(2019-04-06) (aged 84) Cambridge, England[2]
Nationality	British
Alma mater	University of Cambridge (BA) Cornell University (PhD)
Known for	Kosterlitz–Thouless transition Thouless energy Topological quantum numbers
Spouse	Margaret Elizabeth Scrase ​ ​ (m. 1958)​
Children	3[3]
Awards	Maxwell Medal and Prize (1973) Fellow of the Royal Society (1979) Holweck Prize (1980) Lars Onsager Prize (2000) Nobel Prize in Physics (2016)[4]
Scientific career
Fields	Condensed matter physics
Institutions	University of Washington University of California, Berkeley University of Birmingham Yale University
Thesis	The application of perturbation methods to the theory of nuclear matter (1958)
Doctoral advisor	Hans Bethe[5]
Notable students	J. Michael Kosterlitz (postdoc)[3]

In 2016, Thouless was reported to be suffering from dementia.^[10] He died on 6 April 2019 in Cambridge, at the age of 84.^[2]

References

1. Sturrock, Laura (5 October 2016). "Bearsden scientist is awarded Nobel prize in Physics". Kirkintilloch Herald. Retrieved 6 October 2016.
2. "Professor David Thouless 1934-2019". Trinity Hall, Cambridge. 6 April 2019. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
3. Anon (2016). "BBC Radio 4 profile: Professor David J Thouless". London: BBC.
4. Devlin, Hannah; Sample, Ian (4 October 2016). "British trio win Nobel prize in physics 2016 for work on exotic states of matter – live". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 October 2016.
5. David J. Thouless at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
6. "Physicist Thouless to give two talks at Lab". Archived from the original on 15 October 2006. Retrieved 4 October 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link), Los Alamos National Laboratory
7. The international who's who 1991-92. Europa Publ. 1991. ISBN 978-0-946653-70-6.
8. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016
9. Gibney, Elizabeth; Castelvecchi, Davide (2016). "Physics of 2D exotic matter wins Nobel: British-born theorists recognized for work on topological phases". Nature. 538 (7623). London: Springer Nature: 18. Bibcode:2016Natur.538...18G. doi:10.1038/nature.2016.20722. PMID 27708331. S2CID 4451184.
10. Knapton, Sarah (4 October 2016). "British scientists win Nobel prize in physics for work so baffling it had to be described using bagels". The Telegraph. The Telegraph. Retrieved 24 September 2017.