Rolf Landauer
E87720
Rolf Landauer was a German-American physicist best known for formulating Landauer's principle, which links information theory and thermodynamics by quantifying the minimum possible energy cost of erasing a bit of information.
All labels observed (2)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Rolf Landauer canonical | 6 |
| Landauer | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T736455 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Rolf Landauer Context triple: [Maxwell's demon thought experiment, inspiredWorkBy, Rolf Landauer]
-
A.
William Shockley
William Shockley was an American physicist and co-inventor of the transistor whose work helped launch the field of solid-state electronics and earned him a share of the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.
-
B.
Gordon E. Moore
Gordon E. Moore was an American engineer, co-founder of Intel Corporation, and originator of Moore’s Law, which predicted the exponential growth of computing power.
-
C.
Claude Shannon
Claude Shannon was an American mathematician and electrical engineer known as the "father of information theory" for founding the mathematical framework underlying digital communication and data compression.
-
D.
Melvin Wydler
Melvin Wydler was a U.S. Congressman whose legislative work on technology and innovation policy led to a federal law being named in his honor.
-
E.
John R. Pierce
John R. Pierce was an American engineer and scientist best known for his pioneering work in communications technology, including satellite and microwave systems, and for coining the term "transistor."
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Rolf Landauer Target entity description: Rolf Landauer was a German-American physicist best known for formulating Landauer's principle, which links information theory and thermodynamics by quantifying the minimum possible energy cost of erasing a bit of information.
-
A.
William Shockley
William Shockley was an American physicist and co-inventor of the transistor whose work helped launch the field of solid-state electronics and earned him a share of the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.
-
B.
Gordon E. Moore
Gordon E. Moore was an American engineer, co-founder of Intel Corporation, and originator of Moore’s Law, which predicted the exponential growth of computing power.
-
C.
Claude Shannon
Claude Shannon was an American mathematician and electrical engineer known as the "father of information theory" for founding the mathematical framework underlying digital communication and data compression.
-
D.
Melvin Wydler
Melvin Wydler was a U.S. Congressman whose legislative work on technology and innovation policy led to a federal law being named in his honor.
-
E.
John R. Pierce
John R. Pierce was an American engineer and scientist best known for his pioneering work in communications technology, including satellite and microwave systems, and for coining the term "transistor."
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (47)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
German-American physicist
ⓘ
person ⓘ physicist ⓘ |
| academicDegree | PhD in physics ⓘ |
| awardReceived |
Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize
ⓘ
surface form:
Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize
|
| birthCountry | Germany ⓘ |
| birthDate | 1927-02-04 ⓘ |
| birthPlace | Stuttgart ⓘ |
| citizenship |
Germany
ⓘ
United States of America ⓘ |
| deathDate | 1999-04-27 ⓘ |
| doctoralAdvisor | John Gamble Kirkwood ⓘ |
| educatedAt |
Harvard University
ⓘ
Yale University ⓘ |
| employer |
IBM
ⓘ
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center ⓘ |
| familyName |
Rolf Landauer
self-linksurface differs
ⓘ
surface form:
Landauer
|
| fieldOfWork |
condensed matter physics
ⓘ
information theory ⓘ physics ⓘ statistical mechanics ⓘ |
| givenName | Rolf ⓘ |
| influenced |
Charles H. Bennett
ⓘ
Wojciech H. Zurek ⓘ research on quantum information theory ⓘ research on reversible computing ⓘ |
| knownFor |
Landauer's principle
ⓘ
Landauer–Büttiker formalism ⓘ work on electrical conduction in disordered media ⓘ work on the thermodynamics of computation ⓘ |
| language |
English
ⓘ
German ⓘ |
| memberOf |
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
ⓘ
American Physical Society ⓘ National Academy of Sciences ⓘ |
| name | Rolf Landauer self-link ⓘ |
| nationality |
American
ⓘ
German ⓘ |
| occupation |
physicist
ⓘ
research scientist ⓘ |
| placeOfDeath | Yonkers, New York ⓘ |
| publicationTopic |
irreversibility in computation
ⓘ
mesoscopic physics ⓘ thermodynamics of information ⓘ |
| theoryFormulated | Landauer's principle ⓘ |
| workedOn |
electrical transport in inhomogeneous media
ⓘ
noise in mesoscopic conductors ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Rolf Landauer Description of subject: Rolf Landauer was a German-American physicist best known for formulating Landauer's principle, which links information theory and thermodynamics by quantifying the minimum possible energy cost of erasing a bit of information.
Referenced by (7)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
this entity surface form:
Landauer