Peter Andreas Grünberg, 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.

Biography

Grünberg was born in Pilsen, Bohemia, which at the time was in the German-occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic) to the Sudeten German family of Anna and Feodor A. Grünberg which first lived in Dysina (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 had 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. His mother Anna (who died in 2002 aged 100) had to work in agriculture and stayed with her parents in the Petermann house in Untersekerschan (Dolní Sekyřany), where her children (a sister was born in 1937) were brought 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.

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.

Notable awards

• Wolf Prize in Physics (2006)
• European Inventor of the Year (2006)
• Japan Prize 2007
• Nobel Prize in Physics (2007)