Robert Betts Laughlin is a professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University who, together with Horst L. St�rmer and Daniel C. Tsui, was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in physics for his explanation of the fractional quantum Hall effect.He earned a B.A. in Mathematics from UC Berkeley and his Ph.D. in physics at MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the period of 2004-2006 he served as the president of KAIST in Daejeon, South Korea. Laughlin shares similar views to George Chapline, doubting the existence of black holes.