Ivar Giaever

Ivar Giaever ( original spelling Ivar Giæver; born April 5, 1929 in Bergen, Norway ) is a Norwegian- American physicist.

Life

Giaever graduated from 1948 to 1952 to study engineering at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim. In 1954 he emigrated to Canada, where he worked in an architect's office and then as an engineer at General Electric. In 1956 he moved to the United States. From 1958 to 1969 Giaever worked at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy (New York ) in the field of superconductivity ( lossless conduction of electricity ) and the tunnel effect. For this research, he received his doctorate in 1964. During a research stay in England, he dealt with the biophysical problems and developed a method for the detection of immune responses. Since 1988, Giaever professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, also at the Institute of Physics of the University of Oslo.

Giaever received in 1973 with Leo Esaki the Nobel Prize in Physics for his experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in half and superconductors. In the same year Brian D. Josephson received for his theoretical prediction of properties at a Supra flow through a tunnel barrier, in particular those phenomena which are generally known as the Josephson effect, the Nobel Prize for physics. Since 1970, Giaever also works as a biologist.

Nature is for the people like the refrigerator for a dog: He knows that food is in there, but he will never understand how the refrigerator works ( Ivar Giaever )

Position on climate change

Giaever joined in 2011 publicity of the American Physical Society, because this was not willing to " irrefutable " to evaluate the findings on climate change differently. We can not be ready at the same time to discuss the mass of a proton or to keep the basic structure of the universe for an open question, but prohibit any discussion on climate change.