Peter Grünberg

Peter Andreas Grunberg (18 May 1939 - 7 April 2018) was a German physicist.
He won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering giant magnetoresistance. This made gigabyte hard disk drives easier to make. Half of the prize was given to Albert Fert. Fert discovered giant magnetoresistance at the same time. But, Fert and Grunberg did not work together.
Early life
Grunberg was born in Pilsen, Bohemia. When he was born, Pilsen was controlled by Nazi Germany. They called the country the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. It is known now as the Czech Republic. Grunberg's father was named Fjodor Grinberg. He changed his name to Fjodor Grunberg in 1941.
The rest of the Grunberg family stayed for some time in the Petermann house in Untersekerschan. After World War II, the Czech government forced all people living in Pilsen that spoke German to leave the country. This was called the Benes decrees. He moved with his mother (who died in 2002, aged 74) and sister to Lauterbach, Hesse. He studied at a gymnasium (second level school) there.
Grunberg received a diploma in 1962 from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University. Then he studied at the Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany. He got his diploma in physics in 1966 and his Ph.D. in 1969 there. From 1969-1972, he studied at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Later, he joined the Institute for Solid State Physics at the Julich Research Centre. He was a leading researcher of magnetism until he retired in 2004.
Important work
Grunberg made important discoveries with ferrite (iron) and magnetism, such as the Giant magnetoresistive effect (GMR) in 1988. GMR has been used in many modern hard drives. Another use of the GMR effect is in magnetic random access memory.
Apart from the Nobel Prize, Grunberg has been awarded with shared prizes in the APS International Prize for New Materials, the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Magnetism Award, the Hewlett-Packard Europhysics Prize, the Wolf Prize in Physics in and the 2007 Japan Prize. He won the German Future Prize for Technology and Innovation in 1998. He was named the European Inventor of the Year in the category "Universities and research institutions" by the European Patent Office and European Commission in 2006.
Death
Grunberg died on 7 April 2018 in Julich, Germany at the age of 78.
Published work (selection)
Patent, Germany, 3820475 "Magnetfeldsensor mit ferromagnetischer, dunner Schicht" filed on 16.06.1988
Patent, US, 4949039 "Magnetic field sensor with ferromagnetic thin layers having magnetically antiparallel polarized components"
Grunberg, Peter, Y. Suzuki, T. Katayama, K. Takanashi, R. Schreiber, K. Tanaka. 1997. "The magneto-optical effect of Cr(001) wedged ultrathin films grown on Fe(001)". JMMM . 165, 134.
P. Grunberg, J.A. Wolf, R.Schafer. 1996. "Long Range Exchange Interactions in Epitaxial Layered Magnetic Structures". Physica B 221, 357.
M. Schafer, Q. Leng, R. Schreiber, K. Takanashi, P. Grunberg, W. Zinn. 1995. "Experiments on Interlayer Exchange Coupling" (invited at 5th NEC Symp., Karuizawa, Japan). J. of Mat. Sci. and Eng. . B31, 17.
A. Fert, P. Grunberg, A. Barthelemy, F. Petroff, W. Zinn (invited at ICM in Warsaw, 1994). 1995. "Layered magnetic structures: interlayer exchange coupling and giant magnetoresistance". JMMM. 140-144, 1.
P. Grunberg, A. Fuss, Q. Leng, R. Schreiber, J.A. Wolf. 1993. "Interlayer Coupling and its Relation to Growth and Structure". Proc. of NATO workshop on "Magnetism and Structure in Systems of Reduced Dimension", ed. by R.F.C. Farrow et al., NATO ASI Series B: Physics Vol. 309, p. 87, Plenum Press, N.Y. 1993.
A. Fuss, S. Demokritov, P. Grunberg, W. Zinn. 1992. "Short- and long period oscillations in the exchange coupling of Fe across epitaxially grown Al- and Au-interlayers". JMMM. 103, L211.
G. Binasch, P. Grunberg, F. Saurenbach, W. Zinn. 1989. "Enhanced magnetoresistance in Fe-Cr layered structures with antiferromagnetic interlayer exchange". Physical Review B39. 4282.
P. Grunberg, R. Schreiber, Y. Pang, M.B. Brodsky, H. Sowers. 1986. "Layered Magnetic Structures: Evidence for antiferromagnetic coupling of Fe-layers across Cr-interlayers". Physical Review Letters. 57, 2442.