The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2007 jointly to Albert Fert Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/THALES, Université Paris-Sud, France, and Peter Grünberg Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, “for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance”.

This year’s physics Nobel Prize is awarded for the technology independently discovered in 1988 that is used to read data on hard disks.

Thanks to the discovered it is possible to miniaturize hard disks so much as new sensitive read-out heads are needed to be able to read data from the compact hard disks used in laptops and some music players.

Read more here:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2007/press.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7035247.stm