Robert B. Laughlin
Robert Betts Laughlin ( born November 1, 1950 in Visalia, California, United States) is an American physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contribution to the theoretical explanation of the fractional quantum Hall effect in 1998.
Life and work
Laughlin studied physics at the University of California, Berkeley (Bachelor 1972), and - after the military service from 1972 to 1974 - at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, where he obtained his doctorate in 1979. After that, he was from 1979 to 1981 at Bell Laboratories and from 1982 to 2004 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Since 1985 he has been Associate Professor since 1989 and he is a professor of physics at Stanford University in California, since 1992 when Anne Bass and Robert M. Bass Professor of Physics.
He conducted research among other things to the integer and fractional quantum Hall effect, and his contribution to the explanation of the latter earned him - and including the following two experimental physicists - the Nobel Prize. Daniel Tsui and Horst Ludwig Störmer had discovered in 1982 the fractional quantum Hall effect ( FQHE ) in two-dimensional electron systems at very low temperatures and strong magnetic fields. Laughlin found the explanation for some of the unexpected fractional quantum numbers that occur when FQHE. A new type of quantum liquid had been discovered, consisting of a condensate of so-called quasi-particles with the fractional charge, composed of electrons and magnetic flux quanta. Together with the above two colleagues, he received the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics. Laughlin's knowledge is considered as a breakthrough in the understanding of macroscopic quantum phenomena.
In 1986 he was awarded the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize. Since 1994 he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and in 1990 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 1976 to 1978 he was an IBM fellowship. In 1985 he received the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award. 2004 to 2006 he was president of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon in South Korea.
His treatise The crime of reason provides a penetrating analysis of the disparities of the knowledge society in the conflict of economic interests, the need for security and human rights.
Laughlin, in addition to theoretical physics, two other passions. He likes to draw funny cartoons, partly for imaging of his books, among other things, as well as during faculty meetings, and he composes, especially piano sonatas.
View of physics
Laughlin represents propositions about the present and future of physics, which significantly differ from the usual scientific opinion. Thus it is increasingly convinced that everyone - and not just some - of us known laws of nature of collective action emerge through emergence. This view he represents also on very sensitive issues such as the special theory of relativity. Speculative theories he condemned in principle, since they are not based on measurable facts. The Big Bang theory is as " nothing more than marketing ." Such theories Laughlin referred to as " quasi- religious", particularly those regarding a "world formula ".
The future physics would be strengthened to deal with macroscopic phenomena such as the self-organization of matter that are not explainable by atomic or subatomic processes. This view leads Laughlin in his book published in 2007 bid farewell to the world of formula.
Works
- Farewell to the world formula. The reinvention of physics. Piper, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-492-04718-0 ( A different universe - Reinventing physics from the bottom down Basic Books, 2005. ).
- The crime of reason. Fraud in the knowledge society. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-26002-9.
- The last one turns off the light - The future of energy. Piper, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-492-05467-6 ( Powering the Future: . How We Will ( Eventually ) Solve the Energy Crisis and Fuel the Civilization of Tomorrow Basic Books, 2011 )