Stuart Parkin
Stuart Parkin | |
|---|---|
Stuart S. P. Parkin at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics | |
| Born | Stuart Stephen Papworth Parkin 9 December 1955 Watford, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
| Known for | Discoveries on spintronic materials, that allowed a 1000-fold increase in hard disk data density. Racetrack memory (RTM) |
| Spouse | Claudia Felser |
| Awards | Europhysics Prize (1997) Humboldt Research Award (2004) Dresden Barkhausen Award (2009) IUPAP Magnetism Award and Néel Medal (2009) David Adler Lectureship Award (2012) Von Hippel Award (2012) Swan Medal and Prize (2013) Millennium Technology Prize (2014) King Faisal Prize (2021) Clarivate Citation Laureate (2023) APS Medal (2024) Draper Prize (2024) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Material sciences spintronics |
| Institutions | Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics University of Halle-Wittenberg Stanford University IBM Research |
Stuart Stephen Papworth Parkin (born 9 December 1955) is an experimental physicist, Managing Director at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle and an Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the Institute of Physics of the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg.
He is a pioneer in the science and application of spintronic materials, and has made discoveries into the behaviour of thin-film magnetic structures that were critical in enabling recent increases in the data density and capacity of computer hard-disk drives. For these discoveries, he was awarded the 2014 Millennium Technology Prize. He is commonly referred to as the "spin doctor".
Before his current position, Parkin was an IBM Fellow and manager of the magnetoelectronics group at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. He was also a consulting professor in the department of applied physics at Stanford University and director of the IBM-Stanford Spintronic Science and Applications Center, which was formed in 2004.