In science, recognition often follows visibility. But discovery rarely begins under bright lights. It begins in quiet corners, in my case at my office at Seoul National University, with questions no one is yet asking, and with materials no one thinks to study.
Back in 2010, when I first began thinking about the magnetic properties of the hypothetical monolayer magnetic materials, there was no "field" of 2D magnetism. Graphene had just begun reshaping condensed matter physics, and the idea of intrinsic magnetism in a monolayer was met with scepticism, if not total indifference. I began working on FePS3 among many other related materials simply because I was curious. Could antiferromagnetic order survive in a monolayer? Would the Mermin-Wagner theorem be a real barrier, or might anisotropies allow something new to emerge?
These questions drove us—not citations, not headlines.
Between 2012 and 2015, my group made and studied monolayer samples of FePS3 among many other related materials. We presented this work publicly in October 2015 at the Korean Physical Society Fall Meeting and again in February 2016 at the Japan-Korea-Taiwan Symposium in Tokyo, well before anyone took notice of this Small & Crazy (as one put it then) idea, not to mention other publications. In June of 2016, our Nano Letters paper demonstrated antiferromagnetic order in monolayer FePS3. To our knowledge, it was the World's first published experimental realisation of a truly 2D Ising magnet.
Looking back, I don’t claim we were the only ones working on this problem, or that all later work owes something to us. Science is rarely that linear. However, I do believe that history matters and that the early steps in a field deserve to be recognised, not just the polished landmarks that emerge later. If we forget the path, we risk mistaking the destination.
This archive is my attempt to preserve those early steps. It contains documents, talks, photos, and reflections from the formative years of van der Waals magnetism, not as a demand for credit, but as a gesture toward memory. Scientific progress is not just a record of results. It is a record of courage, curiosity, and timing.
I share this for students who want to understand how science begins, and for historians who will one day try to trace how this field took shape. But I also share it for myself: to remember what it felt like to see something before others believed it was there.
If you're a student curious about starting your own path in research, I hope this story encourages you to follow the questions that matter to you—even before the field exists.
Thank you for visiting.
Je-Geun Park