Having gotten that silly Medicine business out of the way, the Swedish Academy has moved on to the important Award, with the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics going to Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance. This is one that people have been calling for for a while, now.
I'll try to give a more complete explanation of what this is and why it's important later, but I'm going to Boston with a student group today, and I need to run to catch the bus. I'll just note quickly that this should be applauded by blog readers, because GMR is an enabling technology for better hard drives.
Feel free to post better explanations, or links to explanations, in the comments while I'm gone.
Physical Science
Comments
IBM has one of the nicest primers on GMR and how it relates to hard disk drive technology:
http://www.research.ibm.com/research/gmr.html
Posted by: Lab Rat | October 9, 2007 8:35 AM
Called it! Boo-yeah.
Posted by: Stephen | October 9, 2007 10:08 AM
Granted, I just named the research field and not people, so I guess I can't win schwag...
Posted by: Stephen | October 9, 2007 10:58 AM
As far as news outlets, Nature News has a particularly clear explanation we excerpted at Science Progress. Thanks for the IBM link, Lab Rat.
Posted by: Andrew Plemmons Pratt | October 9, 2007 6:08 PM
The Nobel site has excellent information, one document for the general public and another that is more technical. I put a link to their press release info after my blog comments on the award.
It has ceased to amaze me at how quickly the Prize can be given for theory and how long it can take for experiment even though the original intent of the Nobel was to recognize advances of exactly this type.
And thanks for that link, Lab Rat. I've appended it to my blog to complement the other information.
Posted by: CCPhysicist | October 10, 2007 9:41 PM