Nobel-Laureate Physicist to Explain the Emergent Age at 11Th U Thant Lecture (9 November)

27October 2005

MR/E34/05

Nobel-Laureate Physicist to Explain “The Emergent Age” at 11th U Thant Lecture (9 November)

Event:11th U Thant Distinguished Lecture: “The Emergent Age”

Speaker:Dr. Robert B. Laughlin, 1998 Nobel Laureate in Physics

Date/Time:9 November 2005 (Wednesday), 10:45 AM – 12:00noon

Venue:U Thant International Conference Hall, 3rd floor, UN House, Tokyo

Organizers:Jointly organized by UNU Centre, UNU Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS), and the Science Council of Japan (SCJ), with support by Yomiuri Shimbun.

Event Overview:

• Dr. Laughlin will explain the emergent theory, a revolutionary macroscopic view of the universe that emphasizes studying the whole structure rather than its component parts. Thisnew way of thinking — which postulates that the physical properties of a complex body derive from the organization of the body’s many particles rather than from the characteristics of individual particles — has profound implications for the future of science.
• The U Thant Distinguished Lecture series is a forum through which eminent thinkers and world leaders speak on the challenges and opportunities facing the world’s peoples and nations in the twenty-first century. Additional information about the series and its lecturers is available online at
• English–Japanese interpretation will be provided. For those unable to attend, the lecture will be “webcast” live (and archived) at

Speaker Profile:

• Dr. Laughlin previously worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and since 1985 has been teaching Physics at StanfordUniversity. He holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
• In 1998, Dr. Laughlin shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Prof. Horst Störmer (ColumbiaUniversity and Lucent Technologies’ Bell Labs) and Prof. Daniel Tsui (PrincetonUniversity) for their discovery that electrons acting together in strong magnetic fields can form new types of particles with charges that are fractions of electron charges.
• Dr. Laughlin also received the Oliver E. Buckley Prize from the American Physical Society (1986) and the Medal of the Franklin Institute(1998) for his work on the “fractional quantum Hall effect”.
• Dr. Laughlin is president of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and a leader in the reform of science education in Korea.

Media representatives are cordially invited to attend. Please contact Naoko Yano, UNU Office of Communications (tel: 03-5467-1311; e-mail: )or Mitzi Borromeo, UNU-IAS (tel: 045-221-2314; e-mail: ) to reserve your space.