Dr. Albert Fert is a distinguished French physicist renowned for his groundbreaking contributions to condensed matter physics and spintronics. Born in Carcassonne, France in 1938, he completed his doctorate in Physical Sciences at the University of Paris XI in 1970 under the direction of Ian Campbell at the Laboratory of Solid Physics. He established his academic career at the Orsay Faculty of Sciences, progressing from assistant professor in 1965 to full professor in 1976. Currently, he serves as Professor Emeritus at Paris-Saclay University while continuing to lead research as the scientific director of the CNRS-Thales Joint Physics Unit and holding an adjunct professorship at Michigan State University.
Fert's most significant contribution came in 1988 when he independently discovered giant magnetoresistance, a quantum mechanical effect that revolutionized data storage technology. This breakthrough demonstrated that electrical resistance could be dramatically altered by alternating nanometer-thick layers of magnetic and non-magnetic materials, achieving resistance changes orders of magnitude greater than previously observed. The discovery of GMR fundamentally transformed the field of spintronics, creating an entirely new subfield of electronics that exploits both the electric charge and magnetic spin properties of electrons. This innovation directly enabled the development of high-capacity hard disk drives that power modern computing devices, with virtually all hard drives manufactured since the late 1990s incorporating GMR technology.
Following his Nobel Prize-winning work, Fert has continued to advance the frontiers of spintronics, exploring topological properties at surfaces and interfaces with significant contributions to the understanding of skyrmions and spin-charge current conversion. His theoretical work with Thierry Valet on spin accumulation has become foundational to current developments in spintronics applications. Fert has mentored numerous doctoral students who have gone on to become leaders in the field, including Agnès Barthélémy and Frédéric Petroff, with whom he developed influential theories of GMR. Today, he remains actively engaged in cutting-edge research, investigating how topological insulators can be harnessed for next-generation electronic devices that promise greater efficiency and functionality than conventional semiconductor technologies.
