Sir John Pendry FRS: Foreword

Abstract

John Pendry's 65th birthday is on 4 July 2008, and this issue of the Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter is dedicated to him, with articles by friends, colleagues, and former students. By any standards, John Pendry is a great scientist, who has made —and continues to make— an enormous contribution to physics; the wide range of his interests is reflected in the scope of these articles.

Not many scientists can establish a completely new and unexpected area of research, but this has been John's achievement in the last few years in the field of metamaterials, materials whose electromagnetic properties depend on their structure rather than the materials of which the structure is built. In this way, structures with effectively negative electrical permittivity and negative magnetic permeability can be constructed, demonstrating negative refraction; through metamaterials scientists now have access to properties not found in nature, and never previously explored experimentally. Never a week goes by without a potential new application of metamaterials, whether it is perfect lensing, or the cloak of invisibility. This has certainly led to tremendous visibility for John himself, with guest lectures all over the world, and radio and television appearances.