Breaking: Haldane Awarded Nobel Prize in physics

University professor Duncan Haldane was awarded the 2016 Nobel Physics Prize today “for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter”, according to a press release by the Nobel Prize Association.

Haldane, the Eugene Higgins professor of physics, will share half of the prize with J. Michael Kosterlitz of Brown University. The other half was awarded to David Thouless of University of Washington, Seattle.

Haldane joins several other Princeton faculty members who have received a Nobel Prize in physics, including Philip Anderson, Joseph Taylor, Daniel Tsui and David Gross.

"They have used advanced mathematical methods to study unusual phases, or states, of matter, such as superconductors, superfluids or thin magnetic films,"the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in announcing the award. The work done by the three professors was so dense that a member of the Nobel Prize committee had to explain their work via the medium of bagels and pretzel buns, according to CNN.

Haldane earned his B.A in 1973 and Ph.D. in 1978 both from the University of Cambridge. He was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research fellowship from1984-88. Among his many other accolades Haldane is the recipient of the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize of the American Physical Society (1993), is the Lorentz Chair at the Lorentz Institute, Leiden (2008), and co-recipient of the 2012 ICTP Dirac Medal; Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics (2013-2014).

Haldane is currently developing a new geometric description of the fractional quantum Hall effect that introduces the shape of the "composite boson".

More to come...