Robert Laughlin

Robert Betts Laughlin Robert Laughlin, Stanford University.jpg Born November 1, 1950 Alma mater MIT He 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. 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 as the integer quantum Hall effect of the composite fermion.

Laughlin (right) in the White House together with other 1998 US Nobel Prize Winners and the President Bill Clinton.

"A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Up"

"much of present-day biological knowledge is ideological" and scientists "stop thinking" "Evolution by natural selection, for instance, which Charles Darwin originally conceived as a great theory, has lately come to function more as an antitheory, called upon to cover up embarrassing experimental shortcomings and legitimize findings that are at best questionable and at worst not even wrong. Your protein defies the laws of mass action? Evolution did it! Your compicated mess of chemical reactions turns into a chicken? Evolution! The human brain works on logical principles no computer can emulate? Evolution is the cause!" p168-169 (Cited by Frank Turek in Stealing from God, p168.)