Michael Pepper

Last updated

Professor
Sir Michael Pepper
FRS FREng HonFInstP
Born (1942-08-10) 10 August 1942 (age 82)
NationalityBritish
Alma mater University of Reading
Cambridge University
Known forOne dimensional electron transport, Quantum Hall effect [1]
Awards EPS Europhysics Prize (1985)
Hughes Medal (1987)
Mott Medal (2000)
Royal Medal (2005)
FREng [2] (2009)
IET Faraday Medal (2013)
UNSW Dirac Medal (2013) [3]
IOP Newton Medal (2019)
Scientific career
Fields Physics
Institutions University College London
TeraView
University of Cambridge
Toshiba Research Europe Ltd
GEC Hirst Research Centre
Plessey
Doctoral students Alexander R. Hamilton
Other notable students Michelle Simmons

Sir Michael Pepper (born 10 August 1942) is a British physicist notable for his work in semiconductor nanostructures.

Contents

Early life

Pepper was born on 10 August 1942 to Morris and Ruby Pepper. He was educated at St Marylebone Grammar School, a grammar school in the City of Westminster, London that has since closed. He then went on to study physics at the University of Reading and graduated Bachelor of Science (BSc) in 1963. He remained at Reading to undertake postgraduate studies and completed his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in 1967. [4]

In 1987, while an academic of the University of Cambridge, he was granted the status of Master of Arts (MA Cantab). He was awarded a higher doctorate, Doctor of Science (ScD), by Cambridge. [4]

Career

Sir Michael was a physicist at the Plessey Research Laboratories when he formed a collaboration with Sir Nevill Mott, (Nobel Laureate, 1977) which resulted in his commencing research in the Cavendish Laboratory in 1973 on localisation in semiconductor structures. He subsequently joined the GEC Hirst Research Centre where he set up joint Cambridge-GEC projects. He was one of three authors on the paper that eventually brought a Nobel prize for the quantum Hall effect to Klaus von Klitzing. Sir Michael formed the Semiconductor Physics research group [5] at the Cavendish Laboratory in 1984, and following a period as Royal Society Warren Research Fellow was appointed to his current role, Professorship of Physics, at the Cavendish Laboratory in 1987. In 1991, he was appointed managing director of the newly established Toshiba Cambridge Research Centre, now known as the Cambridge Research Laboratory (CRL) of Toshiba Research Europe. [6] The following year, 2001, he was appointed Scientific Director of TeraView, a company formed by spinning off the terahertz research arm of CRL. He became an honorary Professor of Pharmaceutical Science in the University of Otago, New Zealand in 2003. [7] He left his Cambridge Chair to take up the Pender Chair of Nanoelectronics at University College London in 2009 [8] and has been associated with many developments in Semiconductor Physics and applications of terahertz radiation. He sits on the Scientific Advisory Committee of Australia's ARC Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies. [9]

Honors

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1983 [10] and was elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1982. In 1987 he received the Hughes Medal. Previously he had received the Europhysics Prize of the European Physical Society, and the Guthrie Prize of the Institute of Physics both in 1985. The Institute of Physics awarded Sir Michael the first Mott Prize [11] in 2000. He had previously given the first Mott Lecture in 1985. He was awarded the Royal Medal in 2005 for his "work which has had the highest level of influence in condensed matter physics and has resulted in the creation of the modern field of semiconductor nanostructures," [12] gave the Royal Society's Bakerian Prize Lecture in 2004 and received a knighthood in the 2006 New Year's Honours list for services to physics. [13] He was appointed a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. [2] In 2010 he won the Swan Medal and Prize. He has been awarded the 2013 Faraday Medal of the IET. In 2019 he was awarded the Institute of Physics Isaac Newton Medal. [14]

Research interests

Media appearances

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cavendish Laboratory</span> University of Cambridge Physics Department

The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named after the British chemist and physicist Henry Cavendish. The laboratory has had a huge influence on research in the disciplines of physics and biology.

The Royal Radar Establishment was a research centre in Malvern, Worcestershire in the United Kingdom. It was formed in 1953 as the Radar Research Establishment by the merger of the Air Ministry's Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) and the British Army's Radar Research and Development Establishment (RRDE). It was given its new name after a visit by Queen Elizabeth II in 1957. Both names were abbreviated to RRE. In 1976 the Signals Research and Development Establishment (SRDE), involved in communications research, joined the RRE to form the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Josephson</span> British Nobel Laureate in Physics

Brian David Josephson is a British theoretical physicist and professor emeritus of physics at the University of Cambridge. Best known for his pioneering work on superconductivity and quantum tunnelling, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 for his prediction of the Josephson effect, made in 1962 when he was a 22-year-old PhD student at Cambridge University. Josephson is the first Welshman to have won a Nobel Prize in Physics. He shared the prize with physicists Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever, who jointly received half the award for their own work on quantum tunnelling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nevill Francis Mott</span> English physicist, Nobel prize winner

Sir Nevill Francis Mott was a British physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1977 for his work on the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems, especially amorphous semiconductors. The award was shared with Philip W. Anderson and J. H. Van Vleck. The three had conducted loosely related research. Mott and Anderson clarified the reasons why magnetic or amorphous materials can sometimes be metallic and sometimes insulating.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyril Hilsum</span> British physicist

Cyril Hilsum is a British physicist and academic.

Federico Capasso is an Italian-American applied physicist and is one of the inventors of the quantum cascade laser during his work at Bell Laboratories. He is currently on the faculty of Harvard University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Institute of Physics Michael Faraday Medal and Prize</span> Award for outstanding contributions to experimental physics

The Michael Faraday Medal and Prize is a gold medal awarded annually by the Institute of Physics in experimental physics. The award is made "for outstanding and sustained contributions to experimental physics." The medal is accompanied by a prize of £1000 and a certificate.

Alexander Rudolf Hamilton is with the School of Physics at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). He is notable in the area of experimental condensed matter physics, particularly semiconductor nanofabrication and the study of quantum effects in nanometer scale electronic devices at ultra-low temperatures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isaac Newton Medal</span> Gold medal awarded annually by the Institute of Physics

The Isaac Newton Medal and Prize is a gold medal awarded annually by the Institute of Physics (IOP) accompanied by a prize of £1,000. The award is given to a physicist, regardless of subject area, background or nationality, for outstanding contributions to physics. The award winner is invited to give a lecture at the Institute. It is named in honour of Sir Isaac Newton.

The Nevill Mott Medal and Prize is an award presented in selected years by the Institute of Physics in the United Kingdom, for distinguished research in condensed matter or materials physics. It was first established in 1997 thanks to a donation from Sir Nevill Mott's family. Sir Nevill Mott was one of the outstanding British condensed matter theorists and won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977. He died in 1996. The award consists of a silver medal and a prize of £1000.

Donal Donat Conor Bradley is the Vice President for Research at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. From 2015 until 2019, he was head of the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division of the University of Oxford and a Professor of Engineering Science and Physics at Jesus College, Oxford. From 2006 to 2015, he was the Lee-Lucas Professor of Experimental Physics at Imperial College London. He was the founding director of the Centre for Plastic Electronics and served as vice-provost for research at the college.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manuel Cardona</span> Spanish physicist (1934–2014)

Manuel Cardona Castro was a condensed matter physicist. According to the ISI Citations web database, Cardona was one of the eight most cited physicists since 1970. He specialized in solid state physics. Cardona's main interests were in the fields of: Raman scattering as applied to semiconductor microstructures, materials with tailor-made isotopic compositions, and high Tc superconductors, particularly investigations of electronic and vibronic excitations in the normal and superconducting state.

Bryan Ronald Webber, FRS, FInstP is a British physicist and academic. He was a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge from 1973 to 2010, and Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge from 1999 to 2010. He has been awarded the Dirac Medal by the Institute of Physics, the Sakurai Prize by the American Physical Society and the High Energy and Particle Physics Prize by the European Physical Society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gabriel Aeppli</span> American physicist

Gabriel Aeppli is a Swiss-American electrical engineer, co-founder of the London Centre for Nanotechnology, professor of physics at ETH Zürich and EPF Lausanne, and head of the Synchrotron and Nanotechnology department of the Paul Scherrer Institute, also in Switzerland.

The Katharine Burr Blodgett Medal and Prize is a gold medal awarded annually by the Institute of Physics to "recognise contributions to the organisation or application of physics in an industrial or commercial context." The medal is accompanied by a prize of £1000.

Shun Lien Chuang was a Taiwanese-American electrical engineer, optical engineer, and physicist. He was a Fellow of the IEEE, OSA, APS and JSPS, and professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Michael Christopher Payne is a British theoretical physicist, working in the field of computational physics and theoretical condensed matter physics at the University of Cambridge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeremy Baumberg</span> British physicist

Jeremy John Baumberg, is a British physicist who is Professor of Nanoscience in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge and Director of the NanoPhotonics Centre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James F. Scott</span> American physicist (1942–2020)

James Floyd Scott was an American physicist and research director at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He is considered one of the pioneers of ferroelectric memory devices. He was elected to the Royal Society in 2008.

Alexander Giles Davies is a professor of Electronic and Photonic Engineering at the University of Leeds.

References

  1. ↑ Heiblum, Moty; Stem, Ady (March 2000). "Fractional quantum Hall effects". Feature. Physics World . Vol. 13, no. 3. Institute of Physics. pp. 37–44. doi:10.1088/2058-7058/13/3/30.
  2. 1 2 "List of Fellows". Royal Academy of Engineering. Archived from the original on 21 May 2020. Retrieved 6 February 2019.
  3. ↑ "Highest honour for physicist". UNSW Newsroom. 22 November 2013. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
  4. 1 2 "PEPPER, Sir Michael". Who's Who 2014. A & C Black. December 2013. Retrieved 10 August 2014.
  5. ↑ "Semiconductor Physics Group". University of Cambridge. Retrieved 6 February 2019.
  6. ↑ "Cambridge Research Laboratory". Toshiba. Retrieved 6 February 2019.
  7. ↑ University of Otago, School of Pharmacy, Annual Report 2003/2004. Retrieved 2 July 2006
  8. ↑ "Professor Sir Michael Pepper elected to The Royal Academy of Engineering". London Centre for Nanotechnology. 29 July 2009. Retrieved 9 October 2021.
  9. ↑ "Sir Michael biography". Centre for Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies. Retrieved 9 November 2017.
  10. ↑ Royal Society website. Retrieved 4 July 2006
  11. ↑ "Mott medal recipients". Institute of Physics. Retrieved 26 December 2019.
  12. ↑ Royal Society website: Royal Medal. Retrieved 6 May 2006
  13. ↑ Toshiba Research Europe: news article about Pepper's knighthood Archived 12 June 2006 at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved 6 May 2006
  14. ↑ "2019 Institute of Physics Awards — Department of Physics". University of Cambridge. 10 July 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.