Jagadeesh Subbaiah Moodera is an American

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

n origin and is senior research scientist at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

's Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory. In 1994 together with the MIT research team led by P.M. Tedrow and R. Meservey, they showed a practical way to implement room temperature

magnetic tunnel junction Tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) is a magnetoresistance, magnetoresistive effect that occurs in a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ), which is a component consisting of two ferromagnets separated by a thin Insulator (electrical), insulator. If the insula ...

(MTJ) using a magnetic stack based on CoFe–Al2O3–Co, demonstrating a

tunnel magnetoresistance Tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) is a magnetoresistance, magnetoresistive effect that occurs in a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ), which is a component consisting of two ferromagnets separated by a thin Insulator (electrical), insulator. If the insula ...

ratio (TMR) of 11.8%. Low temperature magnetoresistive tunneling had been discovered by Michel Julliere in 1975 but it would be more than a decade before a room temperature system was found. In 1991, Terunobu Miyazaki and others at

Tohoku University is a public research university in Sendai, Miyagi, Japan. It is colloquially referred to as or . Established in 1907 as the third of the Imperial Universities, after the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University, it initially focused on sc ...

had demonstrated a MTJ with room temperature TMR of 2.7%. In 1994, Miyazaki's team developed a room temperature MTJ with high TMR (18.0%) based on an Fe–Al2O3–Fe stack. Thus, both Miyazaki and Merservey are recognized as the developer of room temperature MT

Besides its great fundamental interest, room temperature magnetoresistive tunnelling is the basis for practical devices including Magnetoresistive RAM, MRAM and read heads used in

hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

s. Moodera was named a Fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of ...

in 2000 "for pioneering and sustained contributions to the understanding of

spin Spin or spinning most often refers to: * Spin (physics) or particle spin, a fundamental property of elementary particles * Spin quantum number, a number which defines the value of a particle's spin * Spinning (textiles), the creation of yarn or thr ...

-polarized transport in solids." Before investigating ferromagnetic tunneling, Moodera worked on spin-polarized tunneling in superconductor junctions along with Bob Meservey and Paul Tedrow. Moodera, Meservey, Tedrow and Miyazaki shared the 2009

Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize The Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize is an annual award given by the American Physical Society "to recognize and encourage outstanding theoretical or experimental contributions to condensed matter physics." It was endowed by AT&T Bell Labor ...

"for pioneering work in the field of spin-dependent tunneling and for the application of these phenomena to the field of magnetoelectronics

Born in

Bangalore Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...

, India, Moodera attended Mysore University (B.S. and M.S.) and the

Indian Institute of Technology The Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) are a network of engineering and technology institutions in India. Established in 1950, they are under the purview of the Ministry of Education of the Indian Government and are governed by the Instit ...

(Ph.D.). He was briefly at

West Virginia University West Virginia University (WVU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Morgantown, West Virginia, United States. Its other campuses are those of the West Virginia University Ins ...

before joining the Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory staff at MIT in 1981.

References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Moodera, Jagadeesh Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American physicists Indian emigrants to the United States West Virginia University faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Kodava people Scientists from Bengaluru IIT Madras alumni University of Mysore alumni American academics of Indian descent Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize winners Indian scholars