Shunichi Iwasaki (3 August 1926 ) until his retirement in 1989 professor at Tohoku University and until 1988 at the Lanzhou University (China). He was instrumental in discoveries leading to the development of modern computer hard drives led.Shunichi Iwasaki studied from 1949 at the Engineering Faculty of the University of Tohoku communication technologies. In 1958 he became an assistant professor and in June 1964 a professor at Tohoku University. In 1983, he was Vice President of the Magnetics Society of Japan . as of April 1986, he initiated then the Research Institute of Electrical Communication at Tohoku University and was a member of the Council of the University. In 1988 he became Professor Emeritus at the Lanzhou University, in April 1989, at the University of Tohoku, but increased at the same time as President of Tohoku Institute of Technology on. 

In May of the same year he was also 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 , and was from 1991 to 2000 a member of the Science Council of Japan . In 2003 he became a member of the Japan Academy of Sciences .Iwasaki presented in 1976 for the first time established that, for a vertical orientation of the magnetic moment for data carriers, as in the past instead of a higher data density is usually parallel to the direction of rotation of the data carrier, is possible. This is the key finding that the development of perpendicular recording resulted.In 1987, he became the Bunka Korosha, the Person of Cultural Merit appointed.He received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2014  for the development and realization of the system of Perpendicular Magnetic Recording, which has enabled a dramatic increase in the storage capacity of computer-readable media.