STOCKHOLM/LONDON--Three British-born scientists won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for revealing unusual states of matter, leading to advances in electronics that could aid researchers trying to develop quantum computers.
David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz, who all work at U.S. universities, share the prize for their discoveries on abrupt changes in the properties, or phases, of ultra-thin materials.
Their research centres on topology, a branch of mathematics involving step-wise changes like making a series of holes in an object. The difficult-to-grasp concept was illustrated by Nobel Committee member Thors Hans Hansson at a news conference using a cinnamon bun, a bagel and a Swedish style of pretzel with two holes.
"If you are a topologist, it's only one thing that is really interesting with these things," Hansson said. "The bagel has one hole, the pretzel has two holes ... you cannot have half a hole, or 2-2/3 holes."
The Nobel Prize-winning discovery involved certain materials that go through step changes that affect their electrical properties. The changes are akin to the holes in baked goods, which can have no intermediate steps between one hole or two holes.
One example is a superconductor, which at low temperatures conducts electricity without resistance. "Thanks to their pioneering work, the hunt is now on for new and exotic phases of matter," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in awarding the 8 million Swedish crown ($937,000) prize. "Many people are hopeful of future applications in both materials science and electronics."
Thouless, of the University of Washington in Seattle, was awarded half the prize, with the other half divided between Haldane, of Princeton University, and Kosterlitz, of Brown University.
"We really haven't understood ... the full amount of marvellous things that quantum mechanics can do," Haldane told Reuters in an interview at his home in Princeton, New Jersey. "It does things which we never dreamed of and could actually be tremendously useful for all kinds of new technologies."
Kosterlitz's colleague at Brown, Professor See Chen Ying, said he considered the award long overdue. "You never know, because there are exciting discoveries everywhere, so every year we start thinking is this the year," Ying said in an interview on Brown's campus in Providence, Rhode Island. "Personally, I think it's long overdue."
