IBM Stuart Parkin wins Millennium Prize

A British scientist whose work made it possible for hard disks to radically expand in size has been awarded the Millennium Technology Prize.

Prof Stuart Parkin developed a type of data-reading head capable of detecting weaker and smaller signals than had previously been possible.

The innovation allowed more information to be stored on each disk platter.

The foundation behind the award said he had made Facebook, Google, Amazon and other online services possible.

“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,” said Technology Academy Finland.

“[His] innovations have led to a huge expansion of data acquisition and storage capacities, which in turn have underpinned the evolution of large data centres and cloud services, social networks, music and film distribution online.”

Previous winners of the one million euro ($1.38m; £824,000) award – which is announced every other year – include web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and the Linux operating system kernel developer Linus Torvalds.

Those selected are judged to have invented something that either has changed or has the power to change people’s lives for the better, ideally on a global scale.

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Date: 9th April 2014