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Ivar Giaever

Ivar Giaever, Norwegian-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2025)

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Born
April 5, 1929
Died
June 20, 2025
Zodiac sign
Aries
Birth year
1929

About Ivar Giaever

Ivar Giaever was a Norwegian-American experimental physicist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics with Leo Esaki and Brian Josephson. One half of the prize was jointly awarded to Esaki and Giaever "for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively." One half of the prize was jointly awarded to Esaki and Giaever "for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively." Ivar Giaever was born on April 5, 1929, in Bergen, Norway.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Career and life highlights

The world when Ivar Giaever was born

Ivar Giaever was born in 1929. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1929

  • #1 song"Singin' in the Rain"
  • Top movieThe Broadway Melody (first Best Picture winner)
  • Best-selling bookA Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst baseball All-Star Game proposed
  • Top headlineStock market crashes on Black Tuesday
  • Technology milestoneFirst Academy Awards ceremony held
  • Defining fadYo-yos
  • Notable inventionCar radio
  • World population2.10 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderHerbert Hoover
  • Sports championPhiladelphia Athletics (World Series)
  • U.S. population121.8M

1929 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Ivar Giaever's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19292026
Gas$0.21$3.45/gal
Average home$6,300$435,000
Average income$3,850$67,500
Movie ticket$0.25$11.95
Postage stamp$0.02$0.73
Population121.8M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.