Ivar Giaever

Ivar Giaever
Giaever in 1973
Born
Ivar Giæver

(1929-04-05)April 5, 1929
Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
DiedJune 20, 2025(2025-06-20) (aged 96)
Schenectady, New York, US
Citizenship
  • Norway
  • United States (from 1964)
Alma mater
Known forTunneling in superconductors
Spouse
Inger Skramstad
​
​
(m. 1952; died 2023)​
Children4
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsCondensed matter physics
Institutions
Doctoral advisorHillard Bell Huntington[1]

Ivar Giaever (/ˈjeɪvər/ YAY-ver;[2] Norwegian: Ivar Giæver, pronounced [ˈîːvɑr ˈjæːvər]; April 5, 1929 – June 20, 2025) was a Norwegian–American experimental physicist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics with Leo Esaki and Brian Josephson. One half of the prize was jointly awarded to Esaki and Giaever "for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively."[3]

Biography

Ivar Giaever was born on April 5, 1929, in Bergen, Norway. He studied mechanical engineering at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim, 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 Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York.

In 1960, following from Leo Esaki's discovery of electron tunneling in semiconductors in 1957, Giaever showed that tunneling also took place in superconductors, demonstrating tunneling through a very thin layer of oxide surrounded on both sides by metal in a superconducting or normal state.[4] His 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.[5] Giaever's experimental demonstration of tunneling 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.[6]

In 1964, Giaever received his Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

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 in England through a Guggenheim Fellowship. He continued to work in this area after he returned to the United States, founding the company Applied BioPhysics, Inc., in 1993.[7][8]

In 1988, Giaever left General Electric to become Institute Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In addition, he became a professor at the University of Oslo, sponsored by Statoil.[7]

Giaever died on June 20, 2025, in Schenectady at the age of 96.[9]

Personal life

In 1952, Giaever married his childhood sweetheart Inger Skramstad, who died on September 12, 2023, at the age of 94.[10] They had four children.

Giaever was a climate change denier, who fueled doubt on climate change,[11] for example calling it a "new religion"; however, he had presented no strong evidence to support this position.[12] On September 13, 2011, he resigned from the American Physical Society after the organization called the evidence of damaging global warming "incontrovertible."[13]

Giaever was a science advisor to the Heartland Institute, an American conservative and libertarian think tank that denies climate change.[14]

Giaever co-signed a letter from over 70 Nobel laureate scientists to the Louisiana State Legislature supporting the repeal of the Louisiana Science Education Act.[15]

Giaever was an atheist.[16]

Recognition

Memberships

Country Year Institute Type Section Ref.
United States 1962 American Physical Society Fellow [17]
United States 1974 National Academy of Sciences Member Applied Physical Sciences [18]
United States 1975 National Academy of Engineering Member Bioengineering [19]

Awards

Country Year Institute Award Citation Ref.
United States 1965 American Physical Society Oliver E. Buckley Prize "For being first to use electron tunneling in the study of the energy gap in superconductors and for demonstrating the power of this technique" [20]
Sweden 1973 Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Nobel Prize in Physics[a] "For their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively" (with Leo Esaki) [3]

Honorary degrees

Country Year Institute Degree Ref.
Norway 1985 Norwegian Institute of Technology Doctor honoris causa [21]

Publications

  • Giaever, Ivar (1960). "Energy Gap in Superconductors Measured by Electron Tunneling". Physical Review Letters. 5 (4): 147. Bibcode:1960PhRvL...5..147G. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.5.147.
  • Giaever, Ivar (1960). "Electron Tunneling Between Two Superconductors". Physical Review Letters. 5 (10): 464. Bibcode:1960PhRvL...5..464G. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.5.464.
  • Giaever, Ivar (1974). "Electron tunneling and superconductivity". Reviews of Modern Physics. 46 (2): 245. Bibcode:1974RvMP...46..245G. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.46.245.
  • Giaever, Ivar (2016). "I Am The Smartest Man I Know": A Nobel Laureate's Difficult Journey, World Scientific. ISBN 978-981-3109-17-9.

Notes

  1. ^ Other half awarded to Brian Josephson

References

  1. ^ "Ivar Giaever - Physics Tree". academictree.org. Retrieved December 7, 2025.
  2. ^ "Giaever". Dictionary.com. Archived from the original on March 1, 2024. Retrieved June 24, 2025.
  3. ^ a b "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1973". Nobelprize.org. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. June 27, 2011. Archived from the original on June 21, 2011. Retrieved June 27, 2011. The Nobel Prize in Physics 1973 was divided, one half jointly to Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever "for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively" and the other half to Brian David Josephson "for his theoretical predictions of the properties of a supercurrent through a tunnel barrier, in particular those phenomena which are generally known as the Josephson effects".
  4. ^ Giaever, I. (1960). "Energy Gap in Superconductors Measured by Electron Tunneling". Physical Review Letters. 5 (4): 147–148. Bibcode:1960PhRvL...5..147G. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.5.147.
  5. ^ Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972 for this theoretical advance, which bears their initials.
  6. ^ "Press Release: The 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics". Nobelprize.org. 27 June 2011. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. October 23, 1973. Archived from the original on May 17, 2011. Retrieved June 27, 2011. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics to Leo Esaki, USA, Ivar Giaever, USA and Brian D Josephson, UK. The award is for their discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in solids
  7. ^ a b Lundqvist, Stig (1992). "Biography". Nobelprize.org, Bio from Nobel Lectures, Physics 1971-1980, Editor Stig Lundqvist, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1992. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and World Scientific. Archived from the original on December 14, 2010. Retrieved June 27, 2011.
  8. ^ "Ivar Giaever". American Institute of Physics. Archived from the original on December 7, 2024. Retrieved July 4, 2025.
  9. ^ "Nobel Prize winner Ivar Giæver has died". vg.no (in Norwegian). July 3, 2025. Retrieved July 3, 2025.
  10. ^ "Inger Giaever Obituary". Legacy.com. The Daily Gazette. September 24, 2023. Retrieved May 19, 2024.
  11. ^ Jeffrey D. Corbin, Miriam E. Katz: Effective strategies to counter campus presentations on climate denial. Eos. 93, 27, 2012, doi:10.1029/2012EO270007
  12. ^ Strassel, Kimberley A. (June 26, 2009). "The Climate Change Climate Change The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere". wsj.com. The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on July 4, 2011. Retrieved June 26, 2011. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion."
  13. ^ War of words over global warming as Nobel laureate resigns in protest. The Telegraph. September, 25, 2011.
  14. ^ "Ivar Giaever". Heartland Institute. May 31, 2016. Retrieved June 9, 2017.
  15. ^ "Nobel Laureate Letter". Archived from the original on October 18, 2020. Retrieved January 15, 2012.
  16. ^ Giaever, Ivar (November 2016). "I Am The Smartest Man I Know": A Nobel Laureate's Difficult Journey. World Scientific. ISBN 978-981-3109-17-9.
  17. ^ "Fellows Archive". American Physical Society. Retrieved July 30, 2025.
  18. ^ "Ivar Giaever". National Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on July 18, 2025. Retrieved November 1, 2025.
  19. ^ "Dr. Ivar Giaever". National Academy of Engineering. Archived from the original on August 6, 2024. Retrieved November 1, 2025.
  20. ^ "Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize". www.aps.org. Retrieved May 3, 2022.
  21. ^ "Honorary Doctors". Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Archived from the original on October 1, 2025.
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