Ivar Giaever
Biography
Ivar Giaever was born in Bergen, Norway, April 5, 1929, the second
of three children. He grew up in Toten where his father, John A. Giaever,
was a pharmacist. He attended elementary school in Toten but received
his secondary education in the city of Hamar. Next he worked one year
at the Raufoss Munition Factories before entering the Norwegian Institute
of Technology in 1948. He graduated in 1952 with a degree in mechanical
engineering.
In 1953, Giaever completed his military duty as a corporal in the
Norwegian Army, and thereafter he was employed for a year as a
patent examiner for the Norwegian Government.
Giaever emigrated to Canada in 1954 and after a short period as
an architect's aide he joined Canadian General Electric's
Advanced Engineering Program. In 1956, he emigrated to the USA
where he completed the General Electric Company's A, B and C
engineering courses. In these he worked in various assignments as
an applied mathematician. He joined the General Electric Research
and Development Center in 1958 and concurrently started to study
physics at Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute where he obtained a
Ph.D. degree in 1964.
From 1958 to 1969 Dr. Giaever worked in the fields of thin films,
tunneling and superconductivity. In 1965 he was awarded the
Oliver E. Buckley Prize for some pioneering work combining
tunneling and superconductivity. In 1969 he received a Guggenheim
Fellowship and thereupon spent one year in Cambridge, England
studying biophysics. Since returning to the Research and
Development Center in 1970, Dr. Giaever has spent most of his
effort studying the behavior of protein molecules at solid
surfaces. In recognition of his work he was elected a Coolidge
fellow at General Electric in May, 1973.
Dr Giaever is a member of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers, and the Biophysical Society, and he is a
Fellow of the American Physical Society. Dr. Giaever has served
on committees for several international conferences and presently
he is a member of the Executive Committee of the Solid State
division in the American Physical Society.
Ivar Giaever married Inger Skramstad in 1952 and they have four
children. He became a naturalized US citizen in 1964.
Notes added
Linus Pauling is reported to have said that the Nobel Prize did
not change his life - he was already famous! That was not true
for me. The Nobel Prize opened a lot of doors, but also provided
me with many distractions. I have, however, continued to work in
biophysics, attempting to use physical methods and thoughts to
solve biological problems. At the present time, I am studying the
motion of mammalian cells in tissue culture by growing both
normal and cancerous cells on small electrodes.
I left General Electric in 1988 to become an Institute Professor
at Rensselaer (RPI) in Troy, New York 12180-3590, and
concurrently I am also a Professor at the University of Oslo,
Norway, sponsored by STATOIL.
On a personal note my wife and I are now the proud grandparents
of almost four grandchildren.
From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1971-1980, Editor Stig Lundqvist, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1992
This autobiography/biography was first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1973