David Thouless, 84; Nobel Prize winner for physics

David Thouless, a British American physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for exploring strange states of matter and using a blend of physical theory and mathematical insight to create knowledge applicable in computers, electronics and materials science, died April 6 in Cambridge, England. He was 84.

The University of Cambridge’s Trinity Hall, where the condensed-matter physicist was an undergraduate and an honorary fellow, announced the death but did not provide a cause.

In his prizewinning work, Dr. Thouless worked with materials so thin that they could be considered two-dimensional. To these, he applied quantum physics and topology, a branch of mathematics.

Topology places a premium on recognizing objects with gross similarities in physical structure, objects that retain their distinctive aspects despite all sorts of bends and twists and folds.

In the world of daily reality, substances may exist in liquid, solid and vapor phases. In the two-dimensional, low-temperature realms that Thouless studied, new and unusual phases of matter were thought to exist.

Great interest was aroused by one in particular: the phase characterized by the extraordinary ability to conduct electricity. This was known as superconductivity.

At the time Thouless came upon the scene, it seemed to science that transitions in phase in thin films could not be adequately explained. It was thought that random fluctuations, such as those occurring in low-temperature systems, would prevent order among the atoms and molecules, and thereby preclude such phenomena as superconductivity.

Thouless shared the 2016 Nobel with two other physicists from the United Kingdom who also worked in the United States: Duncan Haldane of Princeton University and Michael Kosterlitz of Brown University.