Photo: Per Henning/NTNU / CC BY 2.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
John Pendry is exactly the kind of figure I love to champion. The man behind the theory of the first practical invisibility cloak turned science fiction into solvable physics, pioneering metamaterials with properties nature never made. His shelf of honors, from the Dirac Medal to the Royal Medal, only confirms what the ideas already prove. I admire scientists who quietly rewrite how we see the world rather than chase the spotlight, and Pendry did precisely that. There is a childlike wonder in the phrase invisibility cloak, and the fact that a Cambridge-trained theorist made it real is, to me, the purest kind of romance in research.
Overview
Sir John Brian Pendry, (born 4 July 1943) is an English theoretical physicist known for his research into metamaterials and creation of the first practical "Invisibility Cloak". He is a professor of theoretical solid state physics at Imperial College London where he was head of the department of physics (1998–2001) and principal of the faculty of physical sciences (2001–2002).
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- John Pendry
- Name (Japanese)
- ジョン・ペンドリー
- Reading
- じょん・ぺんどりー
- Born
- July 4, 1943 (age 82)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Cancer / Goat
- Origin
- Manchester, United Kingdom
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- physicist / engineer / university teacher
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- Downing College
Awards & achievements
- 1996 IOP Dirac Medal
- 2005 Royal Society Bakerian Medal
- 2005 Descartes Prize
- 2006 Royal Medal
- 2009 Clarivate Citation Laureates
- 2009 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
- 2009 IET Kelvin Lecture
- 2010 UNESCO Niels Bohr Medal
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Physicist — see all → · Engineer — see all → · More people from United Kingdom →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.