This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science.

I'm Steve Mursky.

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The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics

with one half to David J. Thowless

and the other half to F. Duncan Holden and J Michael Kosterlitz for theoretical discoveries of topological

face transitions and topological faces of matter.

Goran Hansen, Secretary General of the Academy this morning.

All three new laureates were born in the UK and went on to US institutions.

Thalice is a Meredith professor at the University of Washington.

Hal Dane is at Princeton and Kosterlitz is at Brown University.

Professor Nils Mortenson, the acting chairman. University. in physics. Yeah, this year's Nobel Prize recognizes important discoveries in the field of condensed matter physics.

And today's advanced technology, take for instance our computers, rely on our ability to understand and control the

properties of the materials involved and this year's noble laureates having their

theoretical work discovered a set of totally unexpected

regularities in the behavior of matter, which can be described in terms of an established

mathematical concept, namely that of topology.

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

technologists. Following the announcement Hal Dane joined in by phone to talk

about the discovery. And at the time I felt it was of scientific interest and mathematical interest and

very fascinating as a consequence of quantum mechanics that we hadn't guessed that.

But I didn't think it would ever find a practical realization, but if something is actually possible, it'll eventually with material science, any kind of unexpected possibilities will eventually lead to some concrete realization.

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