Ivar Giaever

In 1954, Ivar Giaever married Inger Skramstad. The couple has four children and several grandchildren.

Ivar Giaever was born on April 5, 1929 in Bergen, Norway into a middle class family. His father, John A. Giaever, was a pharmacist in the town of Totem. Ivar spent a large part of his childhood in this town.

He began his elementary education at Totem; later he shifted to Hamar, where he completed his secondary education. In 1947, after passing out from school, he joined Raufoss Munition Factories, working there for one year.

In 1948, he entered Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet), located at Trondheim. It was the biggest university in Norway with a special emphasis on engineering courses. There he studied mechanical engineering and received his degree in 1952.

In 1953, he completed his military obligation, serving as a corporal in the Norwegian Army. Thereafter, he took employment under the Norwegian Government and worked as a patent examiner for another year. In 1954, he migrated to Canada.

In Canada, Ivar Giaever began his career as an assistant to an architect; but very soon he changed his job and took employment under Canadian unit of General Electric. Here he joined the company’s Advanced Engineering Program.

In 1956, he was transferred to the General Electric Company's American unit. Working as an applied mathematician on various assignments, he completed the company’s A, B and C engineering courses.

In 1958, he was again transferred to the General Electric Research and Development Center at Schenectady, New York. While working here, his interest turned towards physics. Also in 1958, he entered Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, New York, for his doctoral work in physics.

At General Electric Research and Development Center, Giaever began working in the fields of thin films, tunneling and superconductivity. By now, Japanese physicist, Leo Esaki, had discovered electron tunneling in semiconductors. Giaever now began working in the same direction.

In 1960, he established that tunneling also took place in superconductors. He conducted the experiment with a thin layer of oxide, coated with layers of superconducting metals. The experiment also demonstrated the existence of an energy gap, which is an energy range where no electron states can exist.

Giaever is best known for his 1960 work on tunneling. Amalgamating the superconductor technology with Esaki’s work in tunneling he demonstrated that electrons can pass like waves of radiation through “holes” in solid-state devices. His work defied the conventional limitations of superconductors.