PHYSICIST

Rolf Landauer

1927 - 1999

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Rolf William Landauer (February 4, 1927 – April 27, 1999) was a German-American physicist who made important contributions in diverse areas of the thermodynamics of information processing, condensed matter physics, and the conductivity of disordered media. Born in Germany, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1938, obtained a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard in 1950, and then spent most of his career at IBM. In 1961 he discovered Landauer's principle, that in any logically irreversible operation that manipulates information, such as erasing a bit of memory, entropy increases and an associated amount of energy is dissipated as heat. This principle is relevant to reversible computing, quantum information and quantum computing. He also is responsible for the Landauer formula relating the electrical resistance of a conductor to its scattering properties. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Rolf Landauer is the 785th most popular physicist (down from 759th in 2019), the 5,509th most popular biography from Germany (down from 5,322nd in 2019) and the 102nd most popular German Physicist.

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Among PHYSICISTS

Among physicists, Rolf Landauer ranks 785 out of 851. Before him are Harvey Fletcher, Frank Press, Walter Munk, Anatoly Logunov, Henrik Svensmark, and James M. Bardeen. After him are Robert Detweiler, Thibault Damour, Erwin Hahn, Abhay Ashtekar, Jeffrey Goldstone, and Edward C. Stone.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1927, Rolf Landauer ranks 433. Before him are Jiří Pešek, Ambrus Nagy, Hugo Dollheiser, Beatrice Ohanessian, Peter Matthiessen, and Attila Dargay. After him are Giorgio Capitani, Kirti Nidhi Bista, Anjali Devi, Jacques Bergerac, Tatyana Zaslavskaya, and Richard Long. Among people deceased in 1999, Rolf Landauer ranks 288. Before him are Man Mohan Adhikari, Thelma Kalama, Roderick Thorp, Akhtar Hameed Khan, Arturo Fernández Meyzán, and Rick Rude. After him are João Carlos de Oliveira, Hoyt Axton, Władysław Hasior, Roderick Chisholm, Boris Kuznetsov, and Ester Boserup.

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In Germany

Among people born in Germany, Rolf Landauer ranks 5,512 out of 7,253. Before him are Mady Rahl (1915), Andreas Thom (1965), Anett Pötzsch (1960), Andrea Berg (1966), Nancy Faeser (1970), and Silvia Neid (1964). After him are Rüdiger Helm (1956), Natalie Horler (1981), Georg Bühler (1837), Andrea Nahles (1970), Klaus-Jürgen Grünke (1951), and Willy Birgel (1891).

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Among PHYSICISTS In Germany

Among physicists born in Germany, Rolf Landauer ranks 102. Before him are Rudolf Haag (1922), Walter Gordon (1893), Arthur Schuster (1851), Gregor Wentzel (1898), Rolf-Dieter Heuer (1948), and Hans Reissner (1874). After him are Werner Israel (1931), Hedwig Kohn (1887), Sabine Hossenfelder (1976), Gabriele Hegerl (1962), and Katherine Freese (1957).

German born Physicists

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