Robert B. Laughlin

Robert Betts Laughlin
Born	(1950-11-01) November 1, 1950 Visalia, California, United States
Nationality	United States
Fields	Theoretical physics
Institutions	Stanford
Alma mater	MIT University of California, Berkeley
Doctoral advisor	John D. Joannopoulos
Known for	Quantum Hall effect
Notable awards	E. O. Lawrence Award (1984) Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (1986) Nobel Prize in physics (1998) The Franklin Medal (1998)

Robert Betts Laughlin (born November 1, 1950) is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University. Along with Horst L. Störmer of Columbia University and Daniel C. Tsui of Princeton University, he was awarded a share of the 1998 Nobel Prize in physics for their explanation of the fractional quantum Hall effect.

Laughlin was born in Visalia, California. He earned a B.A. in Mathematics from UC Berkeley in 1972, and his Ph.D. in physics in 1979 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Between 2004 and 2006 he served as the president of KAIST in Daejeon, South Korea.

Career

In 1983, Laughlin was first to provide a many body wave function, now known as the Laughlin wavefunction, for the fractional quantum hall effect, which was able to correctly explain the fractionalized charge observed in experiments. This state has since been interpreted to be a Bose–Einstein condensate.

View on climate change

Laughlin's view of climate change is that it may be important, but the future is impossible to change. He writes "The geologic record suggests that climate ought not to concern us too much when we’re gazing into the energy future, not because it's unimportant, but because it's beyond our power to control."

Awards

• E. O. Lawrence Award for Physics - 1985
• Oliver E. Buckley Prize - 1986
• National Academy of Sciences - 1994
• Benjamin Franklin Medal for Physics - 1998
• Nobel Prize in Physics - 1998
• Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award - 1999
• Doctorate of Letters, University of Maryland - 2005
• Onsager Medal - 2007

Publications

Laughlin (right) in the White House together with other 1998 US Nobel Prize Winners and the President Bill Clinton

Laughlin published a book entitled A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down in 2005. The book argues for emergence as a replacement for reductionism, in addition to general commentary on hot-topic issues.

• (Trad. esp.: Un universo diferente. La reinvención de la física en la Edad de la Emergencia, Buenos Aires/Madrid, Katz editores, 2007, ISBN 978-84-935432-9-7).
• (Trad. esp.: Crímenes de la razón. El fin de la mentalidad científica, Buenos Aires/Madrid, Katz editores, 2010, ISBN 978-84-96859-68-5).
• Mente y materia. ¿Qué es la vida? Sobre la vigencia de Erwin Schrödinger (with Michael R. Hendrickson; Robert Pogue Harrison and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht), Buenos Aires/Madrid, Katz editores, 2010, ISBN 978-84-92946-12-9.

External links

• Photograph, Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, United States Department of Energy
• Robert B. Laughlin autobiography
• The Crime of Reason and the Closing of the Scientific Mind lecture at the Linda Hall Library, May 4, 2011