Remembering Peter Grunberg

Peter Grunberg was the Czech-born German physicist who was awarded half of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Albert Fert, for his work in giant magnetoresistance. By placing a layer of nonmagnetic metal between layers of magnetized metal, he and Fert independently found that electrical resistance could be drastically reduced when the direction of magnetization was changed owing to the spin of electrons. This allowed for miniaturization of storage devices such as hard drives, and more recently, detection of genes and biomarkers.