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Anita Laughlin

Anita Laughlin is a second grade teacher at Escondido School in Palo Alto, California, and the author of REINDEER WITH KING GUSTAF, an account of how her husband, Stanford University Physics professor Robert B. Laughlin, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1998.

A native of Palo Alto, Anita won the Ivan Linder Creative Writing Prize for Poetry and Playwriting while she was a high school student. She attended Connecticut College, earning a bachelor's degree in English Literature with a minor in Studio Art. She holds two Masters degrees in Education and Special Education and Expressive Art Therapies, from Lesley University.

Since 1995 Anita has taught at Escondido School where she was named among five finalists out of 3,000 teacher nominations for the TeachEach Charles Schwab Foundation Award for her work with Special Needs students.

Anita married Robert Laughlin, a graduate of M.I.T. in 1978. Dr. Laughlin has been a theoretical physicist at Stanford University for 25 years and is the 1998 Nobel Prize recipient in Physics for his work on the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect. They have two grown sons and the family enjoys spending time in the mountains, at the ocean, playing piano, working in the garden, and traveling the world together.