Ivar Giaever

Ivar Giaever (Template:IPAc-en ; Template:Langx, ; 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."

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. 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. 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.

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.

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.

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

Personal life

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

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

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

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.

Giaever was an atheist.

Recognition

Memberships

Country	Year	Institute	Type	Section	Template:Reference column heading
United States	1962	American Physical Society	Fellow
United States	1974	National Academy of Sciences	Member	Applied Physical Sciences
United States	1975	National Academy of Engineering	Member	Bioengineering

Awards

Country	Year	Institute	Award	Citation	Template:Reference column heading
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"
Sweden	1973	Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences	Nobel Prize in PhysicsTemplate:Efn	"For their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively" (with Leo Esaki)

Honorary degrees

Country	Year	Institute	Degree	Template:Reference column heading
Norway	1985	Norwegian Institute of Technology

Publications

• Giaever, Ivar (2016). "I Am The Smartest Man I Know": A Nobel Laureate's Difficult Journey, World Scientific. Template:ISBN.

External links

• Interview with Professor Ivar Giaever, from the Official Nobel Prize Website
• Template:Nobelprize including the Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1973 Electron Tunneling and Superconductivity
• University of Oslo website about Ivar Giaever
• Family genealogy