Cherned up to the maximum

In topological materials, electrons can display behaviour that is fundamentally different from that in 'conventional' matter, and the magnitude of many such 'exotic' phenomena is directly proportional to an entity known as the Chern number. New experiments establish for the first time that the theoretically predicted maximum Chern number can be reached - and controlled - in a real material. When the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 to David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz, they lauded the trio for having "opened the door on an unknown world where matter can assume strange states". Far from being an oddity, the discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter, to which the three theoreticians have contributed so crucially, has grown into one of the most active fields of research in condensed matter physics today. Topological materials hold the promise, for instance, to lead to novel types of electronic components and superconductors, and they harbour deep connections across areas of physics and mathematics. While new phenomena are discovered routinely, there are fundamental aspects yet to be settled. One of those is just how 'strong' topological phenomena can be in a real material.