04-09-2019, 01:01 AM
I don't understand the importance of his achievements because I don't understand the physics. The Nobel Committee did, and what he did sounds either currently or potentially important.
David James Thouless FRS[2] (/ˈθaʊlɛs/; 21 September 1934 – 6 April 2019)[5][6][7] was a British condensed-matter physicist.[8] He was a winner of the 1990 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.[9]
Born in Bearsden, Scotland,[10] Thouless was educated at Winchester College and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge as an undergraduate student of Trinity Hall, Cambridge.[1] He obtained his PhD at Cornell University,[5][11] where Hans Bethe was his doctoral advisor.[4][12]
Thouless was a postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of California Berkeley (he also worked in the physics department) from 1958 to 1959.[13][14] He was the first Director of Studies in Physics at Churchill College, Cambridge in 1961–1965, professor of mathematical physics at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom in 1965–1978,[15] and professor of Applied Science at Yale University from 1979 to 1980,[14] before becoming a professor of physics at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1980.[15] Thouless made many theoretical contributions to the understanding of extended systems of atoms and electrons, and of nucleons.[16][17][18] His work includes work on superconductivity phenomena, properties of nuclear matter, and excited collective motions within nuclei.[16][17][18]
Thouless made many important contributions to the theory of many-body problems.[18] For atomic nucleii, he cleared up the concept of 'rearrangement energy' and derived an expression for the moment of inertia of deformed nuclei.[18] In statistical mechanics, he contributed many ideas to the understanding of ordering, including the concept of 'topological ordering'.[18] Other important results relate to localised electron states in disordered lattices.[2][18]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Thouless
David James Thouless FRS[2] (/ˈθaʊlɛs/; 21 September 1934 – 6 April 2019)[5][6][7] was a British condensed-matter physicist.[8] He was a winner of the 1990 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.[9]
Born in Bearsden, Scotland,[10] Thouless was educated at Winchester College and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge as an undergraduate student of Trinity Hall, Cambridge.[1] He obtained his PhD at Cornell University,[5][11] where Hans Bethe was his doctoral advisor.[4][12]
Thouless was a postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of California Berkeley (he also worked in the physics department) from 1958 to 1959.[13][14] He was the first Director of Studies in Physics at Churchill College, Cambridge in 1961–1965, professor of mathematical physics at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom in 1965–1978,[15] and professor of Applied Science at Yale University from 1979 to 1980,[14] before becoming a professor of physics at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1980.[15] Thouless made many theoretical contributions to the understanding of extended systems of atoms and electrons, and of nucleons.[16][17][18] His work includes work on superconductivity phenomena, properties of nuclear matter, and excited collective motions within nuclei.[16][17][18]
Thouless made many important contributions to the theory of many-body problems.[18] For atomic nucleii, he cleared up the concept of 'rearrangement energy' and derived an expression for the moment of inertia of deformed nuclei.[18] In statistical mechanics, he contributed many ideas to the understanding of ordering, including the concept of 'topological ordering'.[18] Other important results relate to localised electron states in disordered lattices.[2][18]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Thouless
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.