Peter Grünberg, 78, Winner of an ‘iPod Nobel,’ Is Dead
Peter Grünberg, 78, Winner of an ‘iPod Nobel,’ Is Dead Photo Peter Grünberg in his laboratory at a research institute in Jüelich, Germany, in 2007. His prize-winning discovery enabled the era of big data to dawn. Credit Volker Hartmann/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Peter Grünberg, a Nobel-Prize-winning physicist who discovered how to store vast amounts of data by manipulating the magnetic and electrical fields of thin layers of atoms, making possible devices like the iPad and the smartphone, has died at 78.
His death was announced by the Juelich Research Center in Juelich, Germany, where he was a longtime researcher. The center did not provide any other details.
Dr. Grünberg shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2007 with Albert Fert of the Université Paris-Sud in Orsay. They had independently made the same discovery — of an effect known as giant magnetoresistance, in which tiny changes in a magnetic field can result in huge changes in electrical resistance.
The effect is at the h..