Prize for Industrial Applications of Physics
 Stuart
Parkin
1999/2000
International Business Machines
"For
pioneering discoveries and original device demonstrations on giant magnetoresistive
(GMR) read head technology for the magnetic recording industry "
Dr. Stuart S. P. Parkin joined IBM Research in San Jose in 1982 as a World
Trade Post-doctoral Fellow, becoming a permanent member of the staff the following
year. His current work involves the study of magnetic tunnel junctions and the
development of an advanced non-volatile magnetic random access memory based
on magnetic tunnel junction storage cells.
His earlier research
interests have included organic superconductors, ceramic high temperature
supercon-ductors and, most recently, the study of magnetic thin-film
structures and nanostructures exhibiting giant magnetoresistance (GMR).
In 1991, he discovered oscillations in the magnitude of the interlayer
exchange coupling and GMR in transition-metal magnetic multilayered
GMR systems.
For this and related
work, Dr. Parkin shared both the American Physical Society's International
New Materials Prize (1994) and the European Physical Society's Hewlett-Packard
Europhysics Prize (1997). Dr. Parkin has received other awards including
the Materials Research Society Outstanding Young Investigator Award
(1991) and the Charles Vernon Boys Prize from the Institute of Physics,
London (1991), as well as several awards from IBM.
A native of the
United Kingdom, Dr. Parkin received his B.A. degree (1977) and was elected
a Research Fellow (1979) at Trinity College in Cambridge, England, and
was awarded his Ph.D degree (1980) at the Cavendish Laboratory, also
in Cambridge.
Dr. Parkin is a Fellow
of the American Physical Society. In 1997, he was elected a member of the IBM
Academy of Technology and named one of IBM's Master
Inventors. Earlier this year he was appointed an IBM Fellow, IBM'S highest
technical honor.
Parkin made ground-breaking
contributions in several fields of materials research.
In recent years, he has been instrumental in improving the density of
magnetic stor-age devices and securing IBM's continued leadership in
this technology. Parkin's work on magnetic multilayers led him to discoveries
and understanding of giant magnetoresistance (GMR) and oscillatory exchange
coupling, phenomena critical to the development of practical GMR devices.
Then, working with storage systems researchers and engineers, he continued
to make inventions that were vital to a new generation of highly sensitive
read/write heads.
More recently,
Parkin has exploited GMR in a new type of random access memory cell
that is potentially ultrafast and that would retain stored data when
a computer is shut down. This technology-known as magnetic random-access
memory, or MRAM-could enable truly non-volatile random access memory
with both the high speed of today's StaticRAM and the high density of
DynamicRAM. Such a memorycould enable instant-on computers among other
uses.
|
