Robert B. Laughlin
Robert B. Laughlin
Robert Betts Laughlinis 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhysicist
Date of Birth1 November 1950
CountryUnited States of America
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It is ironic that Einsteins most creative work, the general theory of relativity, should boil down to conceptualizing space as a medium when his original premise [in special relativity] was that no such medium existed [..]....
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Another important aspect of our home was respect for ideas.
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I, for example, used to take appliances apart when they broke in an attempt to fix them, which I rarely did successfully, being a kid.
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But it was impressed upon me that there was such a thing as good study habits and that I would have to acquire them if I wanted to be a scholar.
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One of the terrific aspects of MIT in those days was the enormous variety of experimental work that either took place there or was talked about in seminars by outside speakers aggressively recruited by the faculty.
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It was at this moment that I wrote my first important paper in theoretical physics. I was 32 years old, 5 years beyond the alleged age of senility for theorists.
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The experience that firmly placed me on a course toward a professional career in science was the four years I spent as an undergraduate at Berkeley.
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Over the course of time this gave us a deep respect for ideas, both our own and those of others, and an understanding that conflict through debate is a powerful means of revealing truth.
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I owe my interest in mathematics to my father, or more precisely the sense that mathematics was something important and mysterious.
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But through my interests in electron motion in vacuum tubes I discovered a need to describe trajectories of moving particles with equations.
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My childhood home backed onto wheat and cotton fields.
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I also taught myself how to blow glass using a propane torch from the hardware store and managed to make some elementary chemistry plumbing such as tees and small glass bulbs.
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A person obsessed with ultimate truth is a person asking to be relieved of money.
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I was an extremely reclusive and introverted boy.