Disk-shrinking technology behind iPod earns Nobel Prize for physics

TWO European scientists won the 2007 Nobel Prize in physics yesterday for a discovery that allowed the iPod to become reality.

The technology lets computers and other digital devices store reams of data on ever-shrinking hard drives.

France’s Albert Fert and German Peter Gruenberg independently discovered a physical effect in 1988 that has led to sensitive tools for reading the information stored on hard disks. That sensitivity lets the electronics industry use smaller and smaller disks.