Albert Fert

Albert Fert (born 7 March 1938) is a French physicist and one of the discoverers of giant magnetoresistance which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disks. Currently, he is an emeritus professor at Université Paris-Sud in Orsay and scientific director of a joint laboratory ('Unité mixte de recherche') between the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (National Scientific Research Centre) and Thales Group. Also, he is an Adjunct professor of physics at Michigan State University. He was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics together with Peter Grünberg.

Biography

Fert graduated in 1962 from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He received his Ph.D. (doctorat de troisième cycle) in 1963 and his Sc.D. (doctorat des sciences), both from the Orsay Faculty of Sciences of the University of Paris.

In 1988 Fert discovered the Giant magnetoresistance effect (GMR) in multilayers of iron and chromium. Peter Grünberg from the Jülich Research Centre simultaneously and independently discovered GMR. These two discoveries are recognized as the birth of spintronics. Since 1988, Albert Fert has made contributions to the field of spintronics. He is a member of the Fondation Ecologie d'Avenir since 2011.

Honors and awards

• American Physical Society's International Prize for New Materials (1994)
• Grand prix de physique Jean Ricard of the French Physical Society (1994)
• International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Magnetism Award (1994)
• Hewlett-Packard Europhysics Prize (1997)
• Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Gold Medal (2003)
• Wolf Prize in Physics (2006)
• Japan Prize (2007)
• Elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 2004
• Nobel Prize in Physics (2007)

External links

• Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/Thales official website