Prof Nigel Cooper

Biography

Nigel Cooper received a D. Phil from the University of Oxford in 1994. He held research positions at Harvard University and the Institut Laue Langevin, and was a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Birmingham before joining the Cavendish in 2000. He was awarded the 2007 Maxwell Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics, a Humboldt Research Award (2013), an EPSRC Established Career Fellowship (2013), a Simons Investigator Award (2017) and the 2019 Lord Rayleigh Prize of the IOP.

Research

My research interests are focused on the nature and properties of the novel phases of matter that can emerge as a result of quantum mechanical effects in interacting many-particle systems. In particular, I am interested in the role of topology in the collective properties of ultra-cold atomic gases and in the electronic properties of novel solid state materials.