Stuart Parkin

A 1999 IBM Fellow — IBM's highest technical honor — Stuart Parkin was Manager of the Magnetoelectronics group at IBM Research, Almaden, in San Jose, California. He was also a consulting Professor in the Department of Applied Physics at Stanford University. In addition, Parkin served as Director of the IBM-Stanford Spintronic Science and Applications Center, which was formed in 2004.

Born in England, he received his B.A. degree in 1977 and his Ph.D. in 1980, both from the University of Cambridge (UK). He joined IBM as a Postdoctoral Fellow in 1982, becoming a permanent member of the staff the following year. His research interests included organic superconductors, high-temperature superconductors, and, most recently, magnetic thin film structures and spintronic materials and devices for advanced sensor, memory, and logic applications.

Parkin is a pioneer in the science and application of spintronic materials. His exceptional contribution towards the understanding of the giant magnetoresistance (GMR), which Prof. Fert (Gutenberg Lecture Award 2006) and Prof. Grünberg discovered — and for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2007 — was the discovery of the oscillating behaviour of the interface coupling, which is dependent on the thickness of layers. His discovery of oscillatory interlayer coupling in magnetic multilayers and giant magnetoresistance in sputter deposited magnetic metallic heterostructures in 1989 led to IBM's development of the spin-valve read head, which enabled a more than 100-fold increase in the magnetic hard-disk-drive data-density from 1998.

He also proposed using magnetic tunneling junction storage elements to create a high performance magnetic random access memory in 1995. MRAM memory promises unique attributes of high speed, high density, and non-volatility. Parkin's development in 2001 of giant tunneling magnetoresistance in magnetic tunnel junctions using highly textured MgO tunnel barriers made MRAM even more promising. IBM developed the first MRAM prototype in 1999 and subsequently developed a 16 Mbit chip.

Parkin also researched new structures for use as spin transistors and spin-logic devices that may enable a new generation of low-power electronics. In addition to his position as Manager of the Magnetoelectronics Group at the IBM Research Center, he was attracted to Germany as Director at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle and as Humboldt Professor at the University of Halle.

In addition to being named an IBM Fellow, he was also a Fellow of the Royal Society, the American Physical Society, the Institute of Physics (London), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Parkin received the 2008 Gutenberg Research Award on November 25, 2008 at the University of Mainz for his scientific contribution that led to GMR-based read/write heads of computer hard disks. Prof. Felser, Director of MAINZ, noted that he is an outstanding and exceptional scientist. In conjunction with the award, he also worked together with the research group "New Materials with high spin polarisation" (DFG-Forschergruppe 559) in Mainz and Kaiserslautern. Parkin was an external member of MAINZ and became a Fellow of the Gutenberg Research College of JGU in 2011.

He also received an Honorary Doctorate at the University of Kaiserslautern in 2013 and won its Millennium Prize in 2014. In addition, Parkin received Honorary Doctorates from RWTH Aachen, Germany, the Eindhoven University of Science and Technology, The Netherlands, and the University of Regensburg, Germany, and was appointed a Distinguished Visiting Professor at seven universities in Europe, Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea. In January 2012, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences.

Among his many accolades, he received the APS' 2012 David Adler Lectureship Award and the 2012 von Hippel Award from the Materials Research Society; the 2009 IUPAP Magnetism Prize and Néel Medal; the 2008 IEEE Daniel E. Noble Award for his work on MRAM; the 2008 IEEE Distinguished Lecturer Award; the 2004 Humboldt Research Award; the 1999–2000 American Institute of Physics Prize for Industrial Applications of Physics; the European Physical Society's Hewlett Packard Europhysics Prize in 1997; the American Physical Society's International New Materials Prize in 1994; the 1991 MRS Outstanding Young Investigator Award; and the Charles Vernon Boys Prize from the Institute of Physics, London, in 1991. In 2001, Parkin was named R&D Magazine's first Innovator of the Year. He authored over 350 papers and held over 54 issued patents.