David Cobden is Professor of Physics at University of Washington. He studies the physics in nanowires, nanotubes, and two-dimensional materials, with particular interests in low-dimensional, topological and many-body effects and phase transitions. His group fabricates a variety of nanoscale device structures and measures their properties using combinations of electrical transport, optics, scanning probes, photoemission, and other techniques. He is of the opinion that science motivated primarily by curiosity will eventually be of most benefit to society, be it in improving present technologies or in other as yet unimagined ways.