Citation | Dr Parkin is distinguished for his work on new materials with important electronic properties. His earlier work was on novel superconductors. He discovered superconductivity in what is now the major family of organic superconductors, and he is a named inventor in the early IBM high temperature superconductor patents. His more recent work is on magnetic multilayers (formed with transition and other metals). He discovered the periodic reversal of the magnetic exchange from ferro- to antiferromagnetic between magnetic layers as a function of non-magnetic spacer layer thickness in 1990, and he has led this field since then, using a series of elegant experiments to establish, for example, the microscopic origin of the 'giant magnetoresistance' (GMR) phenomenon. The GMR work is considered to be of major commercial significance, and has found application in high-density magnetic recording technologies |