Shun-ichi Iwasaki

Shun-ichi Iwasaki studied at the Faculty of Engineering of the University Tohoku communication technologies. In 1958 he became assistant professor and in June 1964 professor at Tohoku University. In 1983 he became vice president of the Magnetics Society of Japan.[7] From April 1986, he then was head of the Research Institute of Electrical Communication at Tōhoku University and became a member of the University Council. He was retired from Lanzhou University in 1988, and from Tōhoku University in April 1989, but at the same time became President of the Tohoku Institute of Technology. In May of the same year he also became president of the Magnetics Society of Japan. In May 1991 he became a member of the council of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science. Furthermore, from 1991 to 2000 Iwasaki was a member of the Science Council of Japan. In 2003 he became a member of the Japanese Academy of Sciences.

Iwasaki discovered in 1976 for the first time that with a perpendicular alignment of the magnetic moment with data carriers, instead of the usual parallel to the direction of rotation of the data carrier, a higher data density is possible. This is the essential insight that led to the development of perpendicular recording.

In 1987 he was appointed bunka kōrōsha, Person of Cultural Merit.

• Japan Academy Prize (1987)[8]
• Persons of Cultural Merit (1987)
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Eng. (IEEE), USA Technical Achievement Award of the Computer Society (1988)
• Cledo Brunetti Award of IEEE (1989)
• Achievement Award of the Magnetics Society (2002)
• Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold and Silver Star (2003)
• Japan Prize (2010)[9]
• Benjamin Franklin Medal (2014)[10]