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Physicist wins $1.3M tech prize for data storage

By Matti Huuhtanen
Published April 9, 2014 4:05pm ET
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Physicist wins $1.3M tech prize for data storage
This photo made available by the Technology Academy Finland, TAF, shows Professor Stuart Parkin in Stanford, United States, in March 2014. 'Big data' pioneer Parkin is the winner of this year's Millennium Technology Prize. He has invented the GMR read head, a key component of the hard disk drive. The million-euro award will be handed out in Helsinki, Finland, in May. (AP Photo/Lehtikuva, Technology Academy Finland, Rick English) FINLAND OUT | Rick English

HELSINKI (AP) — Anyone who uses large data centers, cloud services, social networks or gets music and film online can thank British-American physicist Stuart Parkin.

Parkin won the 1 million-euro ($1.3 million) Millennium Technology Prize on Wednesday for discoveries leading to a thousand-fold increase in digital data storage on magnetic disks — findings that enabled all of the above services.

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