Dr. Shoucheng Zhang was the J.G. Jackson and C.J. Wood Professor of Physics at Stanford University, where he held a distinguished position for over twenty-five years until his untimely death. Born in Shanghai, China on February 15, 1963, he demonstrated exceptional talent early, entering Fudan University at age fifteen before moving to Berlin for his undergraduate studies. He earned his bachelor's degree from Freie Universität Berlin in 1983 and completed his Ph.D. in physics from SUNY Stony Brook in 1987, initially studying supergravity before transitioning to condensed matter physics on the advice of Nobel laureate Chen-Ning Yang. Following postdoctoral research at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he spent four years as a research staff member at IBM's Almaden Research Center before joining Stanford University as an assistant professor in 1993, rapidly establishing himself as a leading theoretical physicist.
Dr. Zhang revolutionized condensed matter physics through his pioneering work on topological states of matter, most notably discovering topological insulators where electrons conduct along edges without dissipation, enabling a new generation of electronic devices with much lower power consumption. In 2005, his group, working in parallel with Charles Kane and Eugene Mele, proposed the quantum spin Hall effect, and in 2006, Zhang and his students predicted mercury telluride as the first material realizing this quantum state, a prediction soon confirmed experimentally. His earlier work on the fractional quantum Hall effect in 1988 with Kivelson and Hansson derived a topological quantum field theory that elegantly captured the physics of this phenomenon. These groundbreaking contributions established an entirely new field known as topological physics, with profound implications for quantum computing and low-power electronics, as topological states offer protection against environmental noise that plagues conventional quantum systems.
Dr. Zhang's work was so transformative that he was widely speculated to be the next ethnic Chinese recipient of the Nobel Prize, having already received numerous prestigious awards including the Oliver Buckley Prize, Dirac Medal, and Benjamin Franklin Medal for his groundbreaking research. He founded the venture capital firm Danhua Capital and was actively advocating for a new Stanford center devoted to topological physics and quantum information at the time of his death, envisioning it as his legacy to support the next generation of scientists. Despite his untimely death on December 1, 2018 at age 55, Zhang's theoretical framework continues to guide experimental research worldwide, with topological materials now recognized as essential components for future quantum technologies. His insight that Majorana fermions could be used to construct robust quantum computers remains a driving force in the field, with researchers globally working to realize his vision of topological quantum computing that would be unaffected by environmental noise.
