In a swirling world it seemed today's Financial Times story "Nobel physics prize shared by men who made iPod possible" deserved a moment's attention.
Consider the timeline.
Late 1980's working independently 2 physicists, Albert Fert, France and Peter Grunberg, Germany, observed the phenomenom known as " giant magnetoresistance" or GMR:
"a discovery in nanotechnology that has led to the miniaturisation of hard disks in laptop computers and music players."
1997- first commercial read-out using GMR allowing:
"hard disk sensors to read and write much more data, allowing for bigger memory, cheaper and more reliable computers."
2001- iPod launched.
"Without GMR it would not be possible to store more than one song on an Apple iPod."
2007- April- 100 million iPods sold
2007- October- Nobel physics prize shared by GMR discoverers.
Interesting side notes to the story:
i. Role of research team led by Stuart Parkin at IBM's Almaden Research Center, California in turning GMR into a a practical device.
ii. Researchers now gone beyond GMR to TMR (tunnelling magnetoresistance) that is being "introduced to the latest generation of read-out heads.
2 decades. A new industry. Hats off to extraordinary minds.
~ Jenny Ambrozek
