David J. Thouless

David J. Thouless (1934–2019) was a British and American physicist and university teacher whose field of work included nuclear physics. Born in Bearsden, he was educated at Trinity Hall, Cornell University, and Clare Hall, with Hans Bethe serving as his doctoral advisor. He held positions at the University of Washington, University of Birmingham, and Yale University. Thouless was a member of the Royal Society, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He received several honors, including the Holweck Prize, the Fritz London Award, the Wolf Prize in Physics, and the title of Fellow of the Royal Society. His doctoral student was Michael Kosterlitz. Among his published works are *40 Years of Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thousless Theory*, *Quantum Mechanics of Many-Body Systems*, and *Topological quantum numbers in nonrelativistic physics*. Thouless died in Cambridge from dementia.