Nobel Newspaper Article
This is one of several newspaper articles related to Prof. Laughlin's 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics.
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When the Nobel Prize winners began getting phone calls in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, a phone also rang in Chico.
Doris Laughlin of Chico said her phone rang at about 4 a.m. with the word that her nephew and her husband's namesake, Robert C. Laughlin, as one of three scientists picked to share the Nobel Prize for physics.
The 47-year-old Stanford University physicist was named after retired Chico attorney Robert E. Laughlin, Doris's husband.
Mrs. Laughlin said she got the call from her sister-in-law, the physicist's mother.
The older Laughlin suffers from aphasia as a result of a stroke and is unable to speak, explained his wife.
"Bob is proud. If he could talk he's tell you that," said Mrs. Laughlin.
Their nephew, she said, is the son of David Laughlin, who was also an attorney and practiced law with her husband in Chico before moving to Visalia.
The Laughlin family has deep roots in Chico.
Robert E. Laughlin's grandfather, Orlando E. Hart, came to Chico originally at the urging of Annie K. Bidwell to be the pastor of the Presbyterian Church.
The physicist Laughlin visited the area last summer.