Engineers turn science into iPods
Yesterday, I sang the praises of Peter Grünberg and Albert Fert - this year's Nobel Prize winners for Physics who were rewarded for their discovery of the phenomenon of giant magnetoresistance, or GMR. This is the fundamental science behind the miniaturization of hard disks. Today, I want to praise the engineer whose work manifest that scientific discovery as a life enhancing practical application.
Fert and Grünberg's discovery was published in 1988. It was the work of IBM research engineer Stuart Parkin at IBM's research labs in San Jose that begat the now ubiquitous hard disk application of GMR. The discovery of the phenomenon of GMR is a great and wonderful thing, but even Grünberg acknowledges that it was Parkin's work that opened up practical vistas that were beyond even the imagination of the physicists when Fert and Grünberg published their work. Many expected that when Fert and Grünberg received the prize (and this one was anticipated for several years) that they would likely share the prize with Parkin.
Stuart Parkin may be relegated to the background of the rich tapestry of modern invention as have so many seminal contributors (witness Doug Englebart). But I'd like to acknowledge him, for it is his contribution that is the foundation of the iPod and countless local, affordable, tiny data caches. It dropped the cost of the most critical component of computing - storage - by several orders of magnitude - and was a critical component in making practical so many of the wild-eyed dreams in computing that we now take for granted. Thank you, Mr. Parkin.