Albert Fert

Facts

Albert Fert

© The Nobel Foundation. Photo: U. Montan

Albert Fert
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2007

Born: 7 March 1938, Carcassonne, France

Affiliation at the time of the award: Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France; Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/THALES, Orsay, France

Prize motivation: “for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance”

Prize share: 1/2

Work

When materials are reduced to just a few atomic layers—a few nanometers in thickness—their properties change. Independently of one another, Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg discovered the phenomenon Giant Magneto Resistance (GMR) in 1988. GMR involves small changes in magnetic fields creating major differences in electrical resistance. It has also had an impact on electronics, especially read heads, where information stored magnetically is converted to electric current. Thanks to GMR, hard drives have become much smaller.

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