Giaever's research later in his career was mainly in the field ofbiophysics. In 1969, he studied biophysics for a year at theUniversity of Cambridge through aGuggenheim Fellowship. He continued to work in this area after he returned to the US, founding the company Applied BioPhysics, Inc. in 1993.[3][4]
The work that led to Giaever's Nobel Prize was performed at General Electric in 1960. Following on Esaki's discovery ofelectron tunneling insemiconductors in 1958, Giaever showed that tunnelling also took place insuperconductors, demonstrating tunneling through a very thin layer ofoxide surrounded on both sides by metal in a superconducting or normal state.[5] Giaever's experiments demonstrated the existence of anenergy gap in superconductors, one of the most important predictions of theBCS theory of superconductivity, which had been developed in 1957.[6] Giaever's experimental demonstration of tunnelling in superconductors stimulated the theoretical physicistBrian Josephson to work on the phenomenon, leading to his prediction of theJosephson effect in 1962. Esaki and Giaever shared half of the 1973Nobel Prize in Physics, and Josephson received the other half.[7]
Giaever was aclimate change denier, who has fueled doubt onclimate change,[13] for example calling it a "new religion". However, he had presented no strong evidence to support this position.[14] On 13 September 2011, he resigned from theAmerican Physical Society after the organization called the evidence of damaging global warming "incontrovertible".[15]
Giaever was married to his childhood sweetheart Inger Skramstad from 1952 until her death on September 12, 2023, at the age of 94.[17] They had four children.
^"The Nobel Prize in Physics 1973".Nobelprize.org.The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. June 27, 2011. Archived fromthe original on June 21, 2011. RetrievedJune 27, 2011.The Nobel Prize in Physics 1973 was divided, one half jointly to Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever"for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively" and the other half to Brian David Josephson"for his theoretical predictions of the properties of a supercurrent through a tunnel barrier, in particular those phenomena which are generally known as the Josephson effects".
