Michael
Thouless, MA, PhD, ScD, DrTech(h.c.)
Michael
Thouless is the Janine Johnson Weins Professor of
Engineering, an Arthur F Thurnau Professor, and Professor of Mechanical
Engineering and of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor. He grew up in the
UK. He attended King Edward's School,
Birmingham, and then read engineering at Churchill College, Cambridge,
graduating in 1981. He moved to the USA
to do graduate work on the creep rupture of ceramics with Tony Evans at the University of California,
Berkeley. After obtaining a PhD in 1984,
he worked on the fracture of ceramic
composites, and on the spalling of coatings and thin films at Berkeley and at UC
Santa Barbara. In 1988, he moved to the
Physical Sciences Department at IBM as a Research Staff Member, and developed a
research program on interface mechanics and the mechanical properties of
layered materials. In 1995 he joined the University of Michigan,
where he has worked on a variety of projects related to the mechanics of
materials, ranging in scale from Antarctic ice sheets to DNA, and ranging in
technological application from the wear of nuclear fuel rods to the wear of disposable
diapers. He also continued his research
into the fracture of adhesive joints, the mechanical properties of coatings,
the mechanics of adhesion and interfaces, and the development of cohesive-zone
approaches for fracture, often in collaboration with the automotive industry. In addition, with collaborators at UM, he has
pioneered fracture-fabrication techniques for nano-scale devices, and novel design
strategies for protection against blast and impact, and for protection against
ice adhesion. He has most recently been
collaborating on the interaction between mechanics and electrochemistry in
solid-state batteries. He has published over
190 technical
papers, and has 13 US and foreign patents.
Prof. Thouless was awarded a higher doctorate, ScD, from Cambridge University in 2009, and an honorary doctorate, Dr. Technices (honoris causa), from the Danish Technical University in 2021. He was elected an Overseas Fellow at Churchill College Cambridge in 2011 and 2017. He was selected as an Otto Mønsted Guest Professor at the Danish Technical University in 2013 and 2021. He was awarded the Archie Higdon Distinguished Educator Award from the ASEE in 2015, the Nadai Medal from the ASME in 2021, and the 3M Excellence in Adhesion Award from the Adhesion Society in 2023; he is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering, and of the Institute of Materials Minerals and Mining in the UK.