STOCKHOLM // British-born scientists David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday for their studies of unusual states of matter, which may open up new applications in electronics.
Their discoveries, using advanced mathematics, had boosted research in condensed matter physics and raised hopes for uses in new generations of electronics and superconductors or future quantum computers, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
"Thanks to their pioneering work, the hunt is now on for new and exotic phases of matter," the academy said in a statement awarding the 8 million Swedish crown (Dh3.4m) prize.
"Many people are hopeful of future applications in both materials science and electronics."
Nobel judges often award discoveries made decades ago to make sure they withstand the test of time.
Mr Thouless, 82, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington, was awarded half the prize.
The other half was divided between Mr Haldane, 65, a physics professor at Princeton University in New Jersey and Mr Kosterlitz, 73, a physics professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
Speaking by a phone link to a news conference in Stockholm, Mr Haldane said he was "very surprised and very gratified" by the award, adding the laureates stumbled onto the discoveries.
"Most of the big discoveries are really that way," he said. "At least in theoretical things, you never set out to discover something new. You stumble on it and you have the luck to recognise what you've found is something very interesting."
Nils Martensson, acting chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said the winners had discovered a set of totally unexpected regularities in the behaviour of matter.
"This has paved the way for designing new materials with novel properties and there is great hope that this will be important for many future technologies," he said.
Physics is the second of this year's crop of Nobel prizes and comes after Japan's Yoshinori Ohsumi was awarded the prize for medicine on Monday.
As Nobel physics laureates, the trio of researchers join the ranks of some of the greatest names in science, including Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and Marie Curie.
The prizes were first awarded in 1901 to honour achievements in science, literature and peace in accordance with the will of the Swedish dynamite inventor and business tycoon Alfred Nobel, who left much of his wealth to establish the award.
* Reuters and Associated Press
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