Thomas ‘Maurice’ Rice has made important theoretical contributions to our understanding of the electronic properties of materials. His work is distinguished by fruitful cross-fertilisation between theory and experiment, spanning a wide range. The Mott metal–insulator transition and the correlated metallic state in its vicinity, the electron–hole liquid in optically pumped semiconductors, properties of metals with charge and spin density wave order, and unconventional superconducting states in rare earth and transition metal compounds are some of the areas where his contributions have been pioneering. He has played a key role in determining the effective low-energy model for high-temperature superconductors and the identification of the symmetry of superconductive order in them. He has received the Hewlett-Packard Europhysics Prize for solid state physics and the John Bardeen Prize for superconductivity theory. He is an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences.