J. Michael Kosterlitz

John Michael Kosterlitz (born June 22, 1943) is a British-American physicist. He is a professor of physics at Brown University and the son of biochemist Hans Kosterlitz. He was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in physics along with David Thouless and Duncan Haldane for work on condensed matter physics.

Education and early life He was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, to German-Jewish émigrés, the son of the pioneering biochemist Hans Walter Kosterlitz and Hannah Gresshöner. He was educated independently at Robert Gordon's College before transferring to the Edinburgh Academy to prepare for his university entrance examinations. He received his BA degree, subsequently converted to an MA degree, at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. from the University of Oxford as a postgraduate student of Brasenose College, Oxford. the Maxwell Medal and Prize from the British Institute of Physics in 1981, and the Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society in 2000, especially, for his work on the Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless transition. Since 1992, he has been a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2026.

The Kosterlitz Centre at the University of Aberdeen is named in honour of his father, Hans Kosterlitz, a pioneering biochemist specializing in endorphins, who joined the faculty after fleeing Nazi persecution of Jews in 1934.

Climbing Kosterlitz was a pioneer in Alpine climbing in the 1960s, known for working routes in the UK, Italian Alps, and Yosemite. His notable ascents include the first ascent of Fessura Kosterlitz (graded f6B/6a+) in the Orco Valley of the Italian Alps, which was subsequently named after him, and the first repeat of American Direct (graded ED1 6c+) on the West Face of the Petit Dru in the Mont Blanc Massif. Kosterlitz is credited with initiating the Nuovo Mattino ("New Morning") movement of alpinism in the 1970s, where free, aid-less ascents made using new technologies (such as camming devices) became favoured. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1978.