Albert Fert facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Albert Fert
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Fert in 2008
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| Born | 7 March 1938 Carcassonne, France
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| Alma mater | École normale supérieure (Paris) University of Paris |
| Known for | Giant magnetoresistive effect, spintronics, skyrmions |
| Awards | CNRS Gold medal (2003) Wolf Prize in Physics (2006) Japan Prize (2007) Nobel Prize in Physics (2007) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | Université Paris-Saclay, Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/Thales, Michigan State University |
| Doctoral advisor | Ian Campbell |
Albert Fert, born on March 7, 1938, is a French scientist who studies physics. He is famous for helping discover something called giant magnetoresistance. This discovery was a huge step forward for making computer hard disks store much more information. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2007 along with Peter Grünberg for this important work. Today, he is a professor at Paris-Saclay University and works with the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (which is France's National Scientific Research Centre).
Contents
Albert Fert's Early Life and Education
Albert Fert finished his studies at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1962. There, he learned from famous physicists like Alfred Kastler.
After that, he went to the University of Paris. In 1963, he earned his first Ph.D. degree. He then served in the military.
Becoming a Professor
In 1965, Fert became an assistant professor at the University of Paris-Sud. He continued his research and earned another advanced degree in Physical Sciences in 1970. His work focused on how electricity moves through metals like nickel and iron. He became a full professor in 1976.
Discovering Giant Magnetoresistance
From 1970 to 1995, Albert Fert worked in a lab that studied condensed matter physics. This field looks at the physical properties of materials. Later, he moved to a special lab run by the University of Paris-Sud and a technology company called Thales Group.
What is Giant Magnetoresistance?
In 1988, Albert Fert in France and Peter Grünberg in Germany made a huge discovery. They both, at the same time but working separately, found something called giant magnetoresistance (GMR). This happens in very thin layers of magnetic materials.
GMR means that the electrical resistance of a material changes a lot when a magnetic field is applied. This change is much bigger than what was seen before.
The Birth of Spintronics
This discovery of GMR was the start of a new field called spintronics. In spintronics, scientists use not only the electric charge of electrons but also their magnetism, called "spin." Think of spin as a tiny compass needle inside each electron.
How GMR Changed Technology
The discovery of GMR quickly led to important new technologies. It was used to create special "read heads" for computer hard disks. These read heads could detect very small magnetic changes, allowing hard disks to store much more information. This meant your computer could save gigabytes of data!
Spintronics also helps with other technologies. For example, it's used in magnetic random access memory (MRAM). This type of memory could make computers and phones even faster in the future.
Later Research and Honors
Albert Fert has continued to make many important contributions to spintronics. After winning the Nobel Prize, he started exploring how spintronics could use special properties of surfaces and interfaces.
His recent work includes studying "skyrmions." These are tiny, stable magnetic swirls that could be used to store information in new ways. He also researches how to change electric current into "spin current" using special materials called topological insulators.
In 2006, Professor Fert received an honorary doctorate from the University of Kaiserslautern in Germany.
Awards and Recognitions
Albert Fert has received many awards for his groundbreaking work:
- American Physical Society's International Prize for New Materials (1994)
- Grand prix de physique Jean Ricard from the French Physical Society (1994)
- International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) 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)
- Gay-Lussac Humboldt Award (2014)
See also
In Spanish: Albert Fert para niños
