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Global Young Scientists Summit

Duncan Haldane

Meet Nobel Laureate Professor Duncan Haldane, a pioneering physicist whose work on topological states of matter has reshaped our understanding of quantum effects.

Last updated 3 August 2026

Duncan Haldane

Elderly man with curly gray hair, glasses, and a mustache wearing a blue shirt, labeled Duncan Haldane, Nobel Prize Physics 2016.

Professor F. Duncan M. Haldane is the Sherman Fairchild University Professor of Physics at Princeton University, a Fellow of the Royal Society (London), and an International Member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He received his PhD in theoretical condensed matter physics from Cambridge University.

For his theoretical work on topological states of matter, including pioneering work on unexpected (and initially controversial) topological quantum states of one-dimensional systems of magnetic atoms, Prof Haldane was awarded a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2016. He is also the recipient of the 1993 Oliver Buckley Prize and the 2012 Dirac Medal. His work has opened up new directions and ways of thinking about quantum effects in condensed matter and also initiated the field of topological photonics. He currently works on quantum geometry in the fractional quantum Hall effect.