When Arthur Freeman and his colleagues first proposed a new way to make surfaces magnetic, a lot of scientists and engineers couldn`t believe it.
Freeman, a Northwestern University physicist who uses a supercomputer to explore theoretical relationships of molecules, atoms and the forces that govern them, was advising a scheme that went against accepted scientific knowledge.
He said that by laying down a single layer of iron atoms on a surface of some other material, the strength of magnetic force produced would be 50 percent greater than expected. In other magnetic materials such as chromium, magnetic strength could be boosted by a factor of four, the scientists said.
Until Freeman`s bold prediction five years ago based upon theories and supercomputer simulations, most scientists thought magnetic forces required more massive aggregations of atoms and that surface materials were poor sources of magnetism.
Experiments following Freeman`s advice have proved his theory correct, a development likely to have a major affect on technology for digital recording and for computer memory systems.
On Monday, Freeman will be awarded the Materials Research Society Medal in ceremonies at the society`s annual convention in Boston to recognize his work.
That work ”promises to revolutionize our view of the nature of magnetic phenomena at an atomic scale,” said John Baglin an International Business Machines Corp. researcher who is chairman of the society`s medals selection committee.
The award is a triumph for the concept of ”materials by design,” a way of developing new materials that is expected to dominate the science in the coming decade.
Instead of using trial and error, common sense and intuition to conduct experiments to produce new chemicals, drugs or materials, the method used by Freeman calls upon modeling to simulate on a computer screen how various new substances perform.
Using insights gained by supercomputer simulation, theorists such as Freeman can predict how new molecules or combinations of molecules and atoms should be designed to achieve desired characteristics.
