Albert Fert
Paris Descartes University 2009, Paris
Born	(1938-03-07) 7 March 1938 (age 74) Carcassonne, France
Residence	Paris, France
Nationality	France
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Université Paris-Sud, Michigan State University
Alma mater	École normale supérieure
Doctoral advisor	I. A. Campbell
Known for	Giant magnetoresistive effect
Notable awards	Wolf Prize in Physics (2006) Japan Prize (2007) Nobel Prize in Physics (2007)

Albert (Bert) Fert (born 7 March 1938 in Carcassonne, Aude) is a French physicist and one of the discoverers of giant magnetoresistance which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disks. He is currently an emeritus professor at Université Paris-Sud in Orsay and scientific director of a joint laboratory ('Unité mixte de recherche') between the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (National Scientific Research Centre) and Thales Group. Also, he is an Adjunct professor of physics at Michigan State University. He was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics together with Peter Grünberg.

Biography[link]

Fert graduated in 1962 from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He received his master's degree in 1963 at the University of Paris, and earned his PhD in 1970 at the Université Paris-Sud.

In 1988 Fert discovered the Giant magnetoresistance effect (GMR) in multilayers of iron and chromium which is recognized as the birth of spintronics; GMR was simultaneously and independently discovered by Peter Grünberg from the Jülich Research Centre. Since 1988, Albert Fert has made contributions to the field of spintronics.

Honors and awards[link]

• American Physical Society International Prize for New Materials (1994)
• Grand prix de physique Jean Ricard of the French Physical Society (1994)
• International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Magnetism Award (1994)
• Hewlett-Packard Europhysics Prize (1997)
• Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Gold Medal (2003)
• Wolf Prize in Physics (2006)
• Japan Prize (2007)
• Elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 2004
• Nobel Prize in Physics (2007)

Bibliography[link]

References[link]

• "The Nobel Prize in Physics 2007". Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. 2007-10-09. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2007/press.html. 
• Fert, Albert; et al. (November 1988). "Giant Magnetoresistance of (001)Fe/(001)Cr Magnetic Superlattices". Physical Review Letters 61 (21): 2472–2475. Bibcode 1988PhRvL..61.2472B. DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.61.2472. PMID 10039127. 

External links[link]

• Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/Thales official website

Peter Grünberg
Born	(1939-05-18) 18 May 1939 (age 73) Pilsen, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Nationality	Germany
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Carleton University Forschungszentrum Jülich University of Cologne Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST)
Alma mater	Darmstadt University of Technology
Doctoral advisor	Stefan Hüfner
Known for	Giant magnetoresistive effect
Notable awards	Wolf Prize in Physics (2006) European Inventor of the Year (2006) Japan Prize 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics (2007)

Peter Andreas Grünberg (born 18 May 1939) is a German physicist, and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his discovery with Albert Fert of giant magnetoresistance which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disk drives.^[1]

Biography[link]

Grünberg was born in Pilsen, Bohemia, which at the time was in the Nazi-occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic) to the Sudeten German^[2] family of Anna and Feodor A. Grünberg^[3] which first lived in Dysina^[4][5] (Dýšina) to the East of Pilsen.

After the war, the family was interned, the parents were brought to a camp. His father, a Russia-born engineer who since 1928 worked for Škoda, died on 27 November 1945 in Czech imprisonment and is buried in a mass grave in Pilsen which is also inscribed with Grünberg Theodor † 27. November 1945.^[6] His mother Anna (who died in 2002 aged 100)^[7] had to work in agriculture and stayed with her parents in the Petermann^[8] house in Untersekerschan^[9] (Dolní Sekyřany), where her children (a sister was born in 1937) were brought to later. The remaining Grünberg family, like almost all Germans, was expelled from Czechoslovakia in 1946. Seven year old Peter came to Lauterbach, Hesse where he attended gymnasium.^[10]

Grünberg received his intermediate diploma in 1962 from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. He then attended the Darmstadt University of Technology, where he received his diploma in physics in 1966 and his Ph.D. in 1969. From 1969 to 1972, he did postdoctoral work at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He later joined the Institute for Solid State Physics at Forschungszentrum Jülich, where he became a leading researcher in the field of thin film and multilayer magnetism until his retirement in 2004.^[10]

Important work[link]

Peter Grünberg playing guitar during his speech.

In 1986 he discovered the antiparallel exchange coupling between ferromagnetic layers separated by a thin non-ferromagnetic layer, and in 1988 he discovered the Giant magnetoresistive effect (GMR).^[11] GMR was simultaneously and independently discovered by Albert Fert from the Université de Paris Sud. It has been used extensively in read heads of modern hard drives. Another application of the GMR effect is non-volatile, magnetic random access memory.

Apart from the Nobel Prize, Grünberg's work also has been rewarded with shared prizes in the APS International Prize for New Materials, the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Magnetism Award, the Hewlett-Packard Europhysics Prize, the Wolf Prize in Physics and the 2007 Japan Prize. He won the German Future Prize for Technology and Innovation in 1998 and was named European Inventor of the Year^[12] in the category "Universities and research institutions" by the European Patent Office and European Commission in 2006.

Selected publications[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Peter Grünberg webpage at Forschungszentrum Jülich
• List of selected papers