John Pendry

Education Pendry was educated at Downing College, Cambridge, graduating with a Master of Arts degree in Natural Sciences and a PhD in 1969.

Career John Pendry was born in Manchester, where his father was an oil representative, and took a degree in Natural Sciences at the Downing College, Cambridge after which he was appointed as a research fellow, between 1969 and 1975. He spent time at Bell Labs in 1972–3 and was head of the theory group at the SERC Daresbury Laboratory from 1975 to 1981, when he was appointed to the chair in theoretical physics at Imperial College, London, where he stayed for the rest of his career. Preferring administration to teaching, he was Dean of the Royal College of Science from 1993 to 1996, head of the Physics Department from 1998 to 2001 and Principal of the Faculty of Physical Sciences 2001–2. He has authored over 300 research papers and encouraged many experimental initiatives.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1984 and in 2004 he was knighted in the Birthday Honours. In 2008, an issue of Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter was dedicated to him in honour of his 65th birthday.

He is married to Pat, a mathematician he met at Cambridge who became a tax inspector. They have no children. His hobbies include playing the piano. and several books.

Pendry's research career started with his PhD, which was concerned with low-energy electron diffraction (LEED), - the second stage, and has further expanded to diffusion systems - the third stage. The control equations for these three stages are completely different, namely Maxwell equations (a type of wave equation for transverse waves), other wave equations (used to describe both longitudinal and transverse waves), and diffusion equations (used to describe diffusion processes). Therefore, from the perspective of control equations, researchers today can divide the field of metamaterials into three main branches: Electromagnetic/Optical wave metamaterials, other wave metamaterials, and diffusion metamaterials. Diffusion metamaterials are crafted to master various diffusion dynamics, where diffusion length serves as the pivotal measure. This parameter fluctuates over time, yet it does not respond to alterations in frequency. Conversely, wave metamaterials, tailored to modify diverse wave travel patterns, hinge on the wavelength of the incoming waves as their vital measure. Unlike diffusion length, wavelength stays steady over time but varies with frequency changes. At their core, the primary measures of diffusion and wave metamaterials diverge significantly, highlighting a unique complementary connection between the two; more details can be found in Section I.B "Evolution of metamaterial physics" of Ref. In 2009 he and Stefan Maier received a large grant from the Leverhulme Trust to develop the ideas of perfect lens and invisibility cloak in the optical range of light.

Awards and honours In 2025, Pendry was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society.

In 2024, Pendry was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology in the category of "Material Sciences and engineering".

In 2023, Pendry, Sheldon Schultz and David R. Smith were selected as Clarivate Citation laureates in Physics "for their prediction and discovery of negative refraction."

In 2019, Pendry won the SPIE Mozi Award "in recognition of his eminent contributions to the development of perfect lens"

In 2016, Sir John Pendry was awarded the Dan David Prize.

In 2014, he was a co-recipient of the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience, awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, with Stefan Hell of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, and Thomas Ebbesen of the University of Strasbourg.

In 2013, he won the Institute of Physics Isaac Newton Medal.

In 1994, he was a recipient of the BVC Medal and Prize, awarded by the British Vacuum Council.