The Millennium Technology Prize has been awarded to British scientist Professor Stuart Parkin for his work on expanding hard disk capacity. Professor Parkin leveraged an area of physics called spintronics to use how electrons spin to build a technology that could detect weaker smaller signals and allow more data to be stored on hard disks. He wins 1 million euros ($1.39 million) for his efforts. Previous winners have included Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Internet.
The Millennium Technology Prize is award by Finland as recognition of key technical innovations. The prize aims to promote Finland’s technological research capability and is awarded for innovations that are proven to improve the quality of people’s lives in an ongoing manner. Innovations must also stimulate further research. The Millennium Technology Prize foundation, Technology Academy Finland, suggested Professor Parkin’s work had contributed to the rise of online services like Amazon, Facebook and Google.
"Parkin is a leading innovator in the field of spintronics, which relies on the magnetic spin of electrons rather than their charge to store bits and is one of the most successful fields of nanotechnology yet," explained the academy. Because of his work hard, carried out for IBM, disks are able to store around 1,000 times as much data as they previously could. This has made the giant data centers that underpin organizations like Google possible and affordable.
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