2 Europeans share Nobel in physics
The 2007 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded Tuesday to two European scientists who discovered a tiny magnetic effect that has revolutionized the storage of computerized information.France’s Albert Fert and Peter Gruenberg of Germany independently discovered giant magnetoresistance, known as GMR, in 1988. The manipulation of weakly magnetized films of atoms allows iPods, computers and other digital devices to store vast amounts of information on ever-smaller hard disks.
“I can hardly think of an application that has a bigger bang than the magnetic hard drive industry,” said Phil Schewe, a spokesman for the American Institute of Physics. “Every one of us probably owns three or four or five devices, probably more, that depend on billions of bits of information stored on something the size of a dime.”
Well deserved.
