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Robert B. Laughlin

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Robert Betts Laughlin is a famous American physicist. He studies how the tiny parts of our world work. This work is very important for science. He is a professor at Stanford University now. He holds the title of Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor. He teaches both physics and applied physics there.

Clinton&1998NobelLaureates
Clinton&1998NobelLaureates

Laughlin did great work with very small things. He helped explain the fractional quantum Hall effect. This is a special way that matter behaves. In 1983, he created a math tool. Scientists call this the Laughlin wavefunction. This tool helped explain fractionalized charge seen in experiments. It showed how charges work in a new way.

His big discovery earned him a very special prize. In 1998, he won the Nobel Prize in physics. He shared this honor with two other men. They were Horst L. Störmer and Daniel C. Tsui.

Clinton&1998NobelLaureates
Clinton&1998NobelLaureates

They met President Bill Clinton at the White House. Laughlin also won the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Physics. He received the Oliver E. Buckley Prize in 1986.

Robert has lived and worked in many places. He was born in Visalia, California, in 1950. He studied math at UC Berkeley until 1972. Then he earned a Ph.D. from MIT in 1979. He even served as the president of KAIST. That school is in Daejeon, South Korea. He was the president there from 2004 to 2006.

Laughlin also likes to share ideas through books. He wrote a book called A Different Universe. It came out in 2005. This book talks about how things emerge in nature. He also wrote a book about Erwin Schrödinger. Science helps us see how everything is linked together. His work helps us understand the building blocks of life.

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