When you think of a Nobel Prize Winner who do you visualize? what type of person appears in your head?
What are common conditions and environments that may facilitate scientific creativity?
Let's begin by examining David J. Thouless, a 2016 nobel laureate awarded for his research in "theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter".
Where do Nobel Prize Winners come from? Are they immigrants or do they stay in their home country?
The background color represents mobility, which we define as whether the laureate won the award while researching in a different country from which they were born.
Thouless was born in the United Kingdom, and won the Nobel Prize while working at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. This means that Thouless migrated.
How old is a Nobel Prize Winner? Did they make their contribution to humanity while they were young? Or did it take years of hard work?
The shape of the petal represents the age of the laureate when they received the award. We divide age groups into four buckets: 0-25 years old, 25-50 years old, 50-75 years old, and 75-100 years old. The four petal shapes become increasingly pointy as the age bracket it represents increases.
Thouless was 82 years old when he won the Nobel Prize, so he belongs in the 75-100 year age bucket, represented by the pointiest petal shape.
In what category did they win their award? There are many categories to contribute to: Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Economics.
The color of the petal represents the field in which the nobel laureate won the prize.
Thouless won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
What contribution did this winner make to their field? Was it a single act or near countless contributions?
The number of petals represents the number of publications the laureate has published up until receiving the award.The number of petals range from 3 to 6 and the addition of a petal increases the number of publications logarithmically.
Thouless published 143 publications, so his flower has 5 petals.
Did the winner get there by themselves or was it only possible through collaboration with others?
Leaves represent collaboration, which we define as whether the laureate shared the prize.
Thouless shared his award with F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz.
If you'd like to learn more about a laureate, you can click on their flower.
Click the arrow to explore the flower field and learn about other nobel laureates and their varied backgrounds.
