Virgil S. Speriosu

Biography

Dr. Virgil S. Speriosu and Dr. Bruce A. Gurney collaborated on the development of the spin valve while at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. A practical giant-magnetoresistive (GMR) readback sensor, the spin valve has phenomenally extended the capacity and performance of disk drives. Since its commercial introduction in a hard drive in 1997, it has displaced all other detection systems for high-density magnetic disk storage, and related technology is used in all disk drives manufactured today. The resulting increases in data storage capacity have been essential to the establishment and growth of the Internet.

Dr. Speriosu joined IBM's Almaden Research Center in 1984. He was named manager of magnetic thin films in 1989, and manager of thin films for recording heads in 1994. He contributed to the study of ferromagnetic phenomena at numerous institutions around the world. In 1997, he became vice president of wafer development at Applied Magnetics Corporation in Goleta, California, where he worked until his retirement 1999. An IEEE member, his awards include the International Union of Materials Research Societies Award for New Materials and the IBM Corporation Outstanding Technical Achievement Award. The author or co-author of more than 65 publications, he holds 21 patents on spin valve devices.