Michael Pepper

Sir Michael Pepper
Born	10 August 1942
Residence	UK
Nationality	British
Fields	Physicist
Institutions	University College London University of Cambridge GEC Hirst Research Centre Plessey
Alma mater	University of Reading Cambridge University
Doctoral students	Alexander R. Hamilton
Other notable students	Michelle Y. Simmons
Known for	Quantum Hall effect[1]
Influences	Nevill Mott Philip Anderson
Notable awards	Hughes Medal (1987) Royal Medal (2005)

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

Education

Sir Michael went to school at St Marylebone Grammar, then gained a BSc and PhD from the University of Reading and an MA and ScD from Cambridge University.

Career

Sir Michael was a physicist at the Plessey Research Laboratories when he formed a collaboration with Sir Neville Mott, (Nobel Laureate, 1977) which resulted in him commencing research in the Cavendish Laboratory in 1973 on localization 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^[2] 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^[3] (CRL) of Toshiba Research Europe.^[3] 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.^[4] He will be leaving his Cambridge Chair to take up the Pender Chair of Nanoelectronics at University College London in 2009^[5] and has been associated with many developments in Semiconductor Physics and applications of terahertz radiation.

Honors

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1983^[6] 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^[7] 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,"^[8] 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.^[9]

Research interests

• Current and resistance quantisation phenomena
• Measurement of electron charge
• One-dimensional and zero dimensional electronic phenomena
• Quantum transport in general
• Localisation and metal-insulator transitions
• Properties of strongly interacting electron gases
• Bose-Einstein condensation in the solid state
• Hybrid magnetic-semiconductor structures
• Medical physics, Physics in medicine and biology

See also

• Quantum Hall effect

References

1. ^ http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/734
2. ^ Semiconductor Physics Group
3. ^ ^{a b} Cambridge Research Laboratory
4. ^ University of Otago, School of Pharmacy, Annual Report 2003/2004, accessed 2 July 2006
5. ^ [1]
6. ^ Royal Society website accessed 4 July 2006
7. ^ The Mott Medal and Prize
8. ^ Royal Society website: Royal Medal, accessed 6 May 2006
9. ^ Toshiba Research Europe: news article about Pepper's knighthood, accessed 6 May 2006

External links

• Summary of Pepper’s Work from Toshiba
• Homepage at the Semiconductor Physics Research group
• Pepper's publication list
• Toshiba Research Europe
• Pepper's Hughes Medal citation
• Pepper biography

Persondata
Name	Pepper, Michael
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	10 August 1942
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death