Nobel committee announces physics prize

Three British-born scientists won this year’s Nobel Prize in physics, an award announced this morning. David Thouless, Duncan Haldane, and Michael Kosterlitz made breakthroughs in the 1970s and ’80s in “theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.” Those discoveries could lead to new generations of electronics or quantum computers that are more powerful than current systems. All three scientists now work at U.S. universities: Thouless, 82, is a professor emeritus at the University of Washington; Haldane, 65, is a physics professor at Princeton University; and Kosterlitz, 73, is a physics professor at Brown University.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.