Robert B. Laughlin

About Robert B. Laughlin

Who is it?: Physicist
Birth Day: November 01, 1950
Birth Place: Visalia, California, United States, United States
Birth Sign: Sagittarius
Alma mater: MIT University of California, Berkeley
Known for: Quantum Hall effect
Awards: E. O. Lawrence Award (1984) Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (1986) Nobel Prize in physics (1998) The Franklin Medal (1998)
Fields: Theoretical physics
Institutions: Stanford
Doctoral advisor: John D. Joannopoulos

Robert B. Laughlin Net Worth

Robert B. Laughlin was born on November 01, 1950 in Visalia, California, United States, United States, is Physicist. Robert B. Laughlin is an American physicist who received a share of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1998. An expert in semiconductors, he is also known for his work on plasma and nuclear physics issues related to fusion and nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers. As a theorist, his interests range from hard-core engineering to cosmology. The son of a lawyer and a schoolteacher, he grew up in a home where intellectual discussions were encouraged. He developed an early interest in physics and experimented with the electronic gadgets at home as a young boy. So much was his love for performing experiments that he would even occasionally perform potentially dangerous ones, much to the chagrin of his parents. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and proceeded to earn a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then joined the Theory Group at Bell Labs on the recommendation of his professors and began his exciting career in research. It was there that he became fascinated with semiconductors and began his collaborative work with Daniel C. Tsui and Horst L. Störmer that eventually led to the explanation of the fractional quantum Hall effect. The seminal work won the trio the 1998 Nobel Prize in physics.
Robert B. Laughlin is a member of Scientists

💰 Net worth: Under Review

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Biography/Timeline

1972

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.

1983

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.

2005

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.

2019

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."