Ivar Giaever ( ;
Education and career
Ivar Giaever was born on April 5, 1929, in
Bergen, Norway. He studied mechanical engineering at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, graduating with an M.Eng. in 1952. In 1954, he emigrated to Canada, where he was employed by the Canadian division of
General Electric. He then moved to the United States in 1958, joining General Electric's Corporate Research and Development Center in Schenectady, New York. In 1964, he received his Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and became a naturalized US citizen. In 1988, he left General Electric to become a professor at the Polytechnic Institute. In addition, he also became a professor at the University of Oslo, sponsored by
Statoil.
Giaever's research later in his career was mainly in the field of biophysics. In 1969, he studied biophysics for a year at the University of Cambridge through a Guggenheim Fellowship. He continued to work in this area after he returned to the US, founding the company Applied BioPhysics, Inc. in 1993.
Nobel Prize
The work that led to Giaever's Nobel Prize was performed at General Electric in 1960. Following on Esaki's discovery of
electron tunneling in
in 1958, Giaever showed that tunnelling also took place in
, demonstrating tunneling through a very thin layer of
oxide surrounded on both sides by metal in a superconducting or normal state.
Giaever's experiments demonstrated the existence of an
energy gap in superconductors, one of the most important predictions of the
BCS theory of superconductivity, which had been developed in 1957.
[John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and Schrieffer won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972 for this theoretical advance, which bears their initials.] Giaever's experimental demonstration of tunnelling in superconductors stimulated the theoretical physicist
Brian Josephson to work on the phenomenon, leading to his prediction of the
Josephson effect in 1962. Esaki and Giaever shared half of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics, and Josephson received the other half.
Giaever had co-signed a letter from over 70 Nobel laureate scientists to the Louisiana State Legislature supporting the repeal of the Louisiana Science Education Act.
Other awards
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Giaever was also awarded the Oliver E. Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society in 1965, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1966,
and the Zworykin Award of the National Academy of Engineering in 1974.
In 1985, Giaever was awarded an honorary degree, doctor honoris causa, at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, later part of Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Giaever was a Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Global warming
Giaever was a climate change denier, who has fueled doubt on
climate change,
[Jeffrey D. Corbin, Miriam E. Katz: Effective strategies to counter campus presentations on climate denial. Eos. 93, 27, 2012, ] for example calling it a "new religion". However, he had presented no strong evidence to support this position.
On 13 September 2011, he resigned from the American Physical Society after the organization called the evidence of damaging global warming "incontrovertible".
[ War of words over global warming as Nobel laureate resigns in protest. The Telegraph. September, 25, 2011.]
Giaever was a science advisor with American conservative and libertarian think tank The Heartland Institute.
Personal life and death
Giaever was married to his childhood sweetheart Inger Skramstad from 1952 until her death on September 12, 2023, at the age of 94.
They had four children.
Giaever was an atheist.
Giaever died on June 20, 2025, in Schenectady, New York, at the age of 96.
Selected publications
-
Giaever, Ivar (2016). "I Am The Smartest Man I Know": A Nobel Laureate's Difficult Journey, World Scientific. .
External links
