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Born on this day
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a German-language writer of novels and short stories.
27th week in year
3 July 2024

Important personalitiesBack

Robert Betts Laughlin1.11.1950

Wikipedia (23 Oct 2013, 13:52)

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.

Laughlin shares similar views to George Chapline, doubting the existence of black holes.


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."




(photo source www.nobelprize.org)

   
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