Physics is one of the most esoteric of subjects, yet its benefits may be remarkably mundane. The 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics, for example, was awarded for work so practical that you may well be enjoying its benefits even as you read this.
The prize was awarded for the development of technology used to read data on hard disks, allowing them to be miniaturised for use in laptops and some music players, for instance. A hard disk stores information in microscopically small areas magnetized in different directions. The information is retrieved by a read out head that registers the magnetic changes. The more compact the hard disk, the weaker the individual magnetic areas, making them difficult to read.
In 1988 Grünberg discovered a new physical effect – Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR), simultaneously and independently discovered by Frenchman Albert Fert. The effect is based on the quantum-mechanical combination of electron spins in sandwiched nano layers of the read-out head – the electrical resistance of thin magnetic layers can be greatly changed through external magnetic fields, effectively amplifying the signal to make it easier to read. Through a deal with IBM the first read-out head based on the GMR effect was launched in 1997 and this is still the basis of modern read-out techniques of today.
Grünberg was born in 1939 as Peter Andreas Grinberg in Pilsen, Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, which at the time was under German occupation. His engineer father changed the family name in 1941. After the war the Germanspeaking majority of Pilsen was expelled and the Grünbergs settled in Lauterbach. In 1959 Peter entered Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, where he gained an intermediate diploma in physics in 1962. In 1963 he progressed to Darmstadt University of Technology, gaining his diploma in 1966, and PhD in 1969. From 1969–72 he performed postdoctoral work at Carleton University in Ottowa, Canada, before returning to Germany to join the Institute for Solid State Physics at the Jülich Research Centre. He remained there until his retirement in 2004, apart from periods at the Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois, USA and at the University of Sendai and Tsukuba Research Centre, Japan. He also became an adjunct professor at the University of Cologne in 1992. Grünberg has won several other awards for his work, many of them shared with Fert, including the Wolf and Japan prizes. He has a son and two daughters with Helma Prausa, whom he married in 1966.
This text and the picture of the Nobel Laureate were taken from the book: "NOBELS. Nobel Laureates photographed by Peter Badge" (WILEY-VCH, 2008).
Picture: © Peter Badge/ Foundation Lindau Nobelprizewinners Meetings at Lake Constance |