Recent Press Releases
Pioneers of nanotechnology scoop Nobel Prize
IOP
PR38(07)
Tue, 9 October 2007
The winners of the Nobel Prize for Physics 2007 have now been announced. This year the award is being shared between two continental physicists for their independent work on Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR). Work on GMR has spurred on the miniaturisation of the hard disk and made every day devices like MP3 players and laptops possible.
In 1988, both Frenchman Albert Fert and German Peter Grünberg independently concluded that weak magnetic changes, which give rise to differences in electrical resistance, could help create a perfect tool for reading data from hard disks. The work was immediately applied to sensitive read-out heads and has been continually advanced ever since, used, perhaps most noticeably, in devices like the iPod.
Peter Main, Director, Education and Science at the Institute of Physics, said, "Discoveries in physics shape the world around us but the effect of Fert's and Grunberg's discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR) has been more visible than most with a massive impact on industry and our everyday lives. The capacity of today’s computers for data handling and storage has only been made possible by applying GMR to increase data-holding and read-out capacities.
“The Institute of Physics is very glad to see these two physicists' achievements recognised in this way, more than twenty years after they started work in this area. It serves as a timely reminder that important fundamental breakthroughs in physics can have long-lasting significance and that the results of research being undertaken now, in a wide range of areas, will no doubt be primary drivers in how we live and work in another thirty years' time."
Professor Gabriel Aeppli, 2008’s winner of the IOP’s Mott Prize for distinguished research in condensed matter or materials, added, "The work of Fert and Gruenberg is a great example of how 'small' science can have a big impact."
Peter Grünberg’s work is often regarded as one of the first real applications of nanotechnology. For GMR to work, structures consisting of layers that are only a few atoms thick have to be produced. This was only made possible by new techniques developed in the 1970s that are now being widely used to advance fields as diverse as telecommunications, aerospace and healthcare.
ENDS
Notes to editors:
1. For further information about the applications of nanotechnology, see the Institute of Physics’ and The Royal Society of Chemistry’s report, ‘The Future for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology’. http://www.iop.org/activity/policy/Publications/file_22332.pdf
2. For further information about IOP, please contact:
Joe Winters, Press Officer, Institute of Physics, 76 Portland Place, London. W1B 1NT Telephone: +44 (0)20 7470 4815
Mobile: 07946 321473
E-mail: joseph.winters@iop.org
3. The Institute of Physics is a scientific membership organisation devoted to increasing the understanding and application of physics. It has an extensive worldwide membership (currently over 34,000) and is a leading communicator of physics with all audiences from specialists through government to the general public. Its publishing company, Institute of Physics Publishing, is a world leader in scientific publishing and the electronic dissemination of physics and the electronic dissemination of physics.
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