Nobel Lecture

Peter Grünberg held his Nobel Lecture on 8 December 2007, at Aula Magna, Stockholm University. He was introduced by Professor Per Carlson, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

Summary: Several findings following each other led to the discovery of the giant magnetoresistance effect, GMR. An interlayer coupling provided magnetic bridges between thin layers of material. Electrons travelling from one layer to the next were subject to a scattering that depended strongly on the magnetic field direction. The GMR discovery quickly found important applications in disk drives for computers.