Nationality United States Name Robert Laughlin Institutions Stanford Role Professor | Fields Theoretical physics Known for Quantum Hall effect | |
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Born November 1, 1950 (age 73)
Visalia, California, United States ( 1950-11-01 ) Alma mater MIT
University of California, Berkeley Books A Different Universe, The crime of reason Education University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Awards Nobel Prize in Physics, Benjamin Franklin Medal Notable awards Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award Similar People Horst Ludwig Stormer, Daniel C Tsui, Leonard Susskind | ||
Doctoral advisor John D. Joannopoulos | ||
Robert b laughlin usa global ideas
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.
Contents
- Robert b laughlin usa global ideas
- Robert b laughlin does god mix with science
- Career
- View on climate change
- Awards
- Publications
- References
Laughlin was born in Visalia, California. He earned a B.A. in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1972, and his Ph.D. in physics in 1979 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Between 2004 and 2006 he served as the president of KAIST in Daejeon, South Korea.
Robert b laughlin does god mix with science
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, since any effort to slow the rate of fossil fuel usage will "leave the end result exactly the same: all the fossil fuel that used to be in the ground is now in the air, and none is left to burn", and since the climactic/geologic recovery process "will take an eternity from the human perspective, but it will be only a brief instant of geologic time.". 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
Publications
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.