| Who is it? | Physicist |
| Birth Day | November 01, 1950 |
| Birth Place | Visalia, California, United States, United States |
| Age | 72 YEARS OLD |
| 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, an esteemed physicist in the United States, is projected to have a net worth ranging from $100K to $1M by the year 2024. Laughlin's extensive contributions to the field of physics, particularly in the area of condensed matter theory, have earned him significant recognition and financial success. His notable achievements, including being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1998, showcase his exceptional intellect and dedication to his craft. As a distinguished physicist, Laughlin's net worth is expected to continue growing steadily, cementing his status as a highly esteemed figure in the scientific community.
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.
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.
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.
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."
