IAS Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Professor Public Lecture by Prof Duncan Haldane

Prof Duncan Haldane was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics along with David Thouless and John Michael Kosterlitz for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.  Renowned for his work on exotic quantum states of matter, Prof Haldane received his PhD at Cambridge University and his research supervisor was the future Nobel Laureate Philip Warren Anderson.

Prof Haldane’s many honours include Fellow of the Royal Society of London (1996), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2001), the Dirac Medal (2012), National Academy of Sciences Foreign Associate (2017) etc.

About the talk

While the laws of quantum mechanics have remained unchanged and have passed all tests for the last eighty-five years, new discoveries about the exotic states that they allow, “entanglement”, and ideas from quantum information theory, have greatly changed our perspective, and some believe that a “second quantum revolution” is currently underway. The discovery of unexpected “topological states of matter”, and their possible use for “topologically-protected quantum information processing” is one of the important themes of these developments, and will be described.

Light refreshments will be provided after the Nobel public lecture. We look forward to your participation!