David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz hanno vinto il Nobel per la fisica 2016 per i loro studi sulle transizioni di fase topologiche e per le fasi topologiche della materia.
Un lavoro così intellettualmente complesso e poco familiare che  il professor Thors Hans Hansso, membro del Comitato Nobel per la Fisica ha tentato di spiegarlo usando tre prodotti di pasticceria..
“The concept of topology may not be familiar to you”  – ha detto in conferenza stampa a Stoccolma –  “I have a cinnamon bun, I have a bagel and a Swedish pretzel with two holes. Now for us these things are different, one is sweet one is salty, they are different shapes. But if you are a topologist there is only one thing that is really interesting with these things. This thing (the bun) has no holes, the bagel has one hole, the pretzel has two holes. The number of holes is what the topologist would call a topological invariant”