Abstract
The coverage of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics (Physics Today, December 2016, page 14) was enjoyable, particularly because my colleague David Thouless shared in the prize. The piece states, correctly, that in the 1930s “Rudolf Peierls argued convincingly that in [two-dimensional] materials, the thermal motions of atoms would prevent long-range order from being established.” However, the case Peierls made in his 1935 article11. R. E. Peierls, Ann. Inst. Henri Poincare 5, 177 (1935). http://www.numdam.org/item?id=AIHP_1935__5_3_177_0 was a variant of a 1930 argument by Felix Bloch22. F. Bloch, Z. Phys. 61, 206 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01339661 that thermally excited magnons would prevent the establishment of long-range order in two-dimensional Heisenberg magnets.ReferencesSection:ChooseTop of pageReferences <<1. R. E. Peierls, Ann. Inst. Henri Poincare 5, 177 (1935). http://www.numdam.org/item?id=AIHP_1935__5_3_177_0, Google Scholar2. F. Bloch, Z. Phys. 61, 206 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01339661, Google ScholarCrossref© 2017 American Institute of Physics.
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