Stuart Parkin

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.

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.

Education and early life

A native of Watford, England, Parkin received his B.A. (1977) and was elected a research fellow (1979) at Trinity College, Cambridge, England, and was awarded his PhD (1980) at the Cavendish Laboratory, also in Cambridge. He joined IBM in 1982 as a World Trade Post-doctoral Fellow, becoming a permanent member of the staff the following year. In 1999 he was named an IBM Fellow, IBM's highest technical honour.

Research and career

In 2007 Parkin was named a distinguished visiting professor at the National University of Singapore, a visiting chair professor at the National Taiwan University, and an honorary visiting professor at University College London. In 2008, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.