A Brown University scientist is one of three individuals awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics. Physicist J. Michael Kosterlitz won for his research on states of matter, which could have applications in electronics.
Kosterlitz joined the faculty at Brown University in 1982. He began the research that would lead to the Nobel Prize in the early 1970s, when he and David J. Thouless, with whom he shares the prize, overturned the theory that certain electric currents could not occur in matter so thin it could be considered two-dimensional.
The work has applications in both materials science and electronics.
Kosterlitz shares the prize with Thouless, and fellow physicist Duncan M. Haldane.
Before arriving at Brown University, Kosterlitz received his undergraduate degree from Cambridge University, and his doctorate from Oxford.
