GORAN HANSSON: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
has decided to award the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics
with one half to David J. Thouless and the other half
to F. Duncan Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz
for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions
and topological phases of matter.
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F. DUNCAN HALDANE: I introduced
interesting models that demonstrated unexpected
topological effects in quantum mechanics at a time when
no one really -- very few people had been thinking about
topological -- that quantum mechanics could have a topological aspect.
And topology has led to, leads to a remarkable stability of these effects
and very interesting effects of the boundary between so-called normal matter
and topological matter that has lots of possibilities.
So this partly introduced a new way of thinking.
Off to class!
I think you never set out to do it.
You can't say, I'm going to wake up this morning and discover something big.
You get led by, of course there's some pathway that
leads you in that direction, and you have to kind of
be persistent enough to notice that you've found something interesting, right,
and get intrigued by it and explore it more.
Quantum mechanics can do amazing things
and we don't really --
People always say how mysterious quantum mechanics is
but it's only now, really, this century, we're now starting to actually
manipulate things quantum mechanically.
And we're going to discover all kinds of stuff that we don't really understand it.
We know how to do calculations but these topological effects are examples
of things that no one really had dreamt of.
Someone had to initially find these things but it can take time.
[CHEERS, APPLAUSE]
It's a graduate class. Hopefully it will be
inspirational for the graduate students.
STEVEN LI: I just heard this morning.
My friend texted me, and I realized that I have his class
in two hours, and I was just so overwhelmed that he maintained his class.
It's just a completely different feeling sitting in front of a Nobel laureate.
F. DUNCAN HALDANE: It's all due to your inspiration.
JOSEPH TAYLOR: This is really great. Congratulations.
F. DUNCAN HALDANE: Thank you.
This is the man who made it all possible for me
by giving me inspiration to follow in his footsteps.
CHRISTOPHER L. EISGRUBER: As a former student of physics
myself at Princeton, one of my strongest memories
of my undergraduate years here
was the day in 1980 when Val Fitch won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
It was a wonderful moment for the department and for the University,
a celebration of the truly groundbreaking work
that goes on here, and as an undergraduate
I felt privileged simply to have a chance to watch
the excitement from the sidelines.
When I was up late at night, struggling through difficult
problem sets in Fine Library, I would occasionally
seek inspiration by walking through the halls of the physics building
and gazing at the portraits of the many Nobel laureates
who had studied in the department or served on its faculty.
I am delighted today to see this marvelous tradition
extended as Professor Duncan Haldane becomes the newest addition
to this extraordinary department's "hall of fame."
LYMAN PAGE: It's hard to just say a few words.
What an absolutely wonderful colleague he is to have
on so many fronts.
And this is, of course, a wonderful prize but it's especially wonderful
that it went to Duncan. So, cheers!
Here's to you, Duncan, and here's to many more prizes for your colleagues.
DIANA VALVERDE MENDEZ: We were taking
the ENM prelim prep course with Professor Haldane.
Last Thursday, I had a doubt about the subject,
and he stayed with me, like, the whole lunch hour
just trying to figure out what it was about.
He's really approachable and a very nice person, and I'm very glad for him.
M. ZAHID HASAN: Duncan is along the tradition of
some of the best, wonderful theoretical physicists we have at Princeton.
This is in line with the tradition and we're very much excited about it.
RAJEEV ERRAMILLI: It's kind of surreal to
be an undergraduate in a place where there's so many people doing
such amazing, incredible work and getting international recognition.
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