Within hours of getting a pre-dawn call from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Robert B. Laughlin, 48, professor of physics and applied physics and the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, was using the award as a forum for public support of research.

"I owe a debt of gratitude to the taxpayers in my parents' generation," Laughlin told a roomful of reporters and well- wishers, including his mother, wife and son, at a news conference on Oct. 13. "I accuse my generation of not living up to their responsibility to support basic research for future generations. The . . . awards today are the result of careful investments made by people in the previous generation."

In what has become an autumnal event, a stunning fourth Nobel in a row for a Stanford physicist was given to Laughlin for a groundbreaking explanation of a bizarre sideways dance, called the fractional quantum Hall effect, performed by chilled ensembles of electrons trapped in a two-dimensional space and subjected to a strong magnetic field.

Quantum theory, which has been evolving since the beginning of the century, is a mathematical framework describing the behavior of the subatomic world. The fractional quantum Hall effect is the culmination of a series of discoveries that began in 1879 when an American college student, Edwin H. Hall, discovered an effect that is now a standard tool used in laboratories around the world to measure the density of electrical charges in various conducting and semiconducting materials. In 1980, the German physicist Klaus von Klitzing discovered that under certain conditions the Hall effect does not vary in a continuous fashion, but varies "stepwise" with the strength of the magnetic field. In technical terms, the effect exhibited quantum properties.

Laughlin shares the 1998 Nobel award and the $978,000 with the two scientists who performed the experiment that he explained: Horst L. Störmer, a professor at Columbia University and Bell Laboratories, and Daniel C. Tsui, a professor at Princeton University. All three scientists worked together at AT&T's Bell Laboratories in the early 1980s.

Pressed to expand on the significance of their discovery, Laughlin turned on the professorial charm: "You have ordinary particles, obeying ordinary quantum mechanical laws, in ordinary conditions, that behave in unprecedented ways," he said.

The fractional quantum Hall effect is a breakthrough because it proves that the ordinary laws of quantum mechanics can do things that we cannot anticipate, Laughlin explained.

Laughlin's award follows those of SLAC physicist Martin Perl, who was awarded the prize in physics in 1995, and Douglas Osheroff and Steven Chu, who were the recipients in 1996 and 1997, respectively. Both Laughlin and Chu have joint appointments in the departments of physics and applied physics.

At the news conference, the Nobel laureate accepted the kudos with characteristic self-deprecating humor.

He told reporters that when the call "every scientist hopes for" came, the telephone in the Laughlins' bedroom was not working. So it was their 13-year-old son, Todd, who answered it on his own Mickey Mouse phone.

"He came into our room, woke me up, and said, 'Dad, there's some guy from Sweden on the phone who wants to talk to you.' "

At a celebratory champagne reception on the lawn outside the Varian physics building later in the afternoon, Laughlin was hailed by colleagues.

"Let this be the standard for the rest of the faculty," said Chu, last year's winner.
­ David Salisbury

For more information visit http://www.nobel.se