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. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Rolf Landauer has received more than 107,802 page views. His biography is available in 15 different languages on Wikipedia. Rolf Landauer is the 758th most popular physicist, the 5,320th most popular biography from Germany and the 100th most popular German Physicist.

Memorability Metrics

  • 110k

    Page Views (PV)

  • 44.23

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 15

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 4.05

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 2.34

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Among PHYSICISTS

Among physicists, Rolf Landauer ranks 758 out of 851. Before him are Lene Hau, Conyers Herring, Bengt Edlén, Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Yoseph Imry, and Balfour Stewart. After him are Valentine Telegdi, Robert Marshak, Jürgen Kurths, Peter Zoller, Anatoly Logunov, and Sidney Coleman.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1927, Rolf Landauer ranks 406. Before him are Leonid Shcherbakov, Heinz Wewers, Michel Scheuer, Yury Kazakov, Dorothy Manley, and Alvin Sargent. After him are Carmen Zapata, François Nourissier, Chris Connor, Kees Broekman, Tibor Csík, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Among people deceased in 1999, Rolf Landauer ranks 266. Before him are Walter Schleger, Sulo Nurmela, Charles Brown, Enrique Hormazábal, Liselott Linsenhoff, and Augustus Pablo. After him are Willy Bandholz, João Carlos de Oliveira, Yakov Rylsky, Marie Kraja, Lawrence Stone, and Brian Shawe-Taylor.

Others Born in 1927

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Others Deceased in 1999

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In Germany

Among people born in Germany, Rolf Landauer ranks 5,320 out of 7,253. Before him are Kurt Thomas (1904), Jutta Heine (1940), Marcell Jansen (1985), Brigitte Zypries (1953), Nancy Faeser (1970), and Horst Meyer (1941). After him are Paul Koebe (1882), Wilhelm Ferdinand Erichson (1809), Willy Bandholz (1912), Ursula Karven (1964), Udo Zimmermann (1943), and Hauschka (1966).

Others born in Germany

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Among PHYSICISTS In Germany

Among physicists born in Germany, Rolf Landauer ranks 100. Before him are Pief Panofsky (1919), Rudolf Haag (1922), Walter Gordon (1893), Ernst Ising (1900), Arthur Schuster (1851), and Rolf-Dieter Heuer (1948). After him are Jürgen Kurths (1953), Hedwig Kohn (1887), Werner Israel (1931), Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell (1886), Sabine Hossenfelder (1976), and Katherine Freese (1957).

German born Physicists

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