The following article appeared in the current issue of The Stanford
Magazine under the title "Quantum Leap":

   Robert Laughlin, winner of the 1998 Nobel in Physics, is a man who
   likes to understand things. So when he goes to the movies, he doesn't
   just sit back to revel in the cinematic moment. Instead, he listens
   intently to the sound track. "Whether it's at the movies or a formal
   symphonic performance, I'm constantly trying to figure out how they
   do it," the tousle-haired professor confesses, sitting near an antique
   Steinway in his living room overlooking the Stanford foothills. "I
   actually find it very stressful."

   It's been this way with music ever since Laughlin, the Anne T. and
   Robert M. Bass Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, hit
   middle age.  Sure, he hammered away at piano lessons as a kid growing
   up near Fresno, and he took music theory when he was an undergraduate
   at Berkeley.  But it wasn't until 10 years ago that Laughlin, now 50,
   actually got it a deep understanding of the principles underlying
   Western music theory.  The epiphany came when he found an old volume
   called Classical Style by Charles Rosen in a Mendocino bookshop.
   Laughlin says he had not thought about playing the piano for 20 years,
   much less composing.  "But I brought this book home and read it," he
   said.  'actually, I read it several times.  And then I thought, 'Okay!
   I can do that!'"

   Laughlin composed his first piano sonata in his head during the early
   '90s, while he was commuting to campus in bumper-to-bumper traffic
   from his former home in the East Bay. If the thematic material vanished
   from his mind during the day, he says, "I knew it was no good."  But
   if it stuck in his head, he'd go home and write it down after dinner,
   working late into the night on a small Macintosh computer he uses
   with an electronic keyboard and headphones to keep from waking his
   two young sons.

   Over the next decade, he composed three more sonatas, each in a
   different key and rogressively more difficult.  The last one, which
   Laughlin describes as an energetic, angry piece in C minor, "nearly
   killed me," he says. "Somebody once said that troubled children always
   turn out the best, and this is no exception. This is the best one
   because I had to think harder about how to resolve it."

   Since winning the Nobel for his groundbreaking work in quantum
   mechanics, Laughlin has been traveling, so he hasn't had as much time
   to compose as he would like. Someday, though, he would like to record
   his sonatas on compact disc and perhaps even publish them in a music
   journal.  In the meantime, anyone wanting to listen to Laughlin's
   compositions can download them from his website:

     http://large.stanford.edu/rbl/index.htm

   "[Movie composer] John Williams I'm not," he says candidly.  "Society
   is so complicated now that you can't be a true Renaissance person
   anymore.  But at least you can aspire to it."

Art Scott
Livermore, Cal.