German physicist Peter Gruenberg, a joint Nobel Prize winner whose work revolutionised digital data storage, has died aged 78, his research centre said Monday.
Professor Gruenberg died last week, said a statement by the Research Centre Juelich near Cologne, mourning the loss of "an excellent researcher" and "well-respected and popular colleague".
Gruenberg received the 2007 Nobel prize for physics, together with French scientist Albert Fert, after both had separately discovered so-called giant magnetoresistance (GMR) which led to a breakthrough in the development of gigabyte hard disks.
Their work laid the foundations for the field of spintronics, which exploits the quantum mechanical spin of electrons for micro- and nanoelectronics, with applications ranging from video tape to MP3 players and hard disks, said the centre.