Michael Pepper facts for kids

Sir Michael Pepper, born on August 10, 1942, is a British physicist. He is famous for his important work with tiny electronic parts called semiconductor nanostructures.

Sir Michael Pepper's Life and Work

Early Life and Education

Michael Pepper was born on August 10, 1942. He went to St Marylebone Grammar School in London. After school, he studied physics at the University of Reading. He earned his first degree in 1963. He continued his studies there and received his PhD in 1967.

Later, in 1987, while working at the University of Cambridge, he earned a Master of Arts degree. Cambridge University also gave him a higher degree called a Doctor of Science.

Career Highlights

Sir Michael started his career as a physicist at Plessey Research Laboratories. There, he worked with Sir Nevill Mott, a Nobel Prize winner. This led him to start research at the Cavendish Laboratory in 1973. He studied how electrons move in tiny semiconductor structures.

He then joined the GEC Hirst Research Centre. He helped set up joint projects between Cambridge University and GEC. He was one of three scientists who wrote a paper that helped Klaus von Klitzing win a Nobel Prize for the quantum Hall effect.

In 1984, Sir Michael created the Semiconductor Physics research group at the Cavendish Laboratory. He became a Professor of Physics there in 1987. In 1991, he became the managing director of the new Toshiba Cambridge Research Centre. This center is now known as the Cambridge Research Laboratory (CRL) of Toshiba Research Europe.

In 2001, he became the Scientific Director of TeraView. This company was created from the terahertz research part of CRL. Terahertz radiation is a type of electromagnetic wave. In 2009, he moved to University College London. He became the Pender Chair of Nanoelectronics there. He has helped with many new ideas in semiconductor physics and using terahertz radiation.

Awards and Honors

Sir Michael Pepper has received many important awards for his work:

• In 1983, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. This is a group of the UK's most famous scientists.
• In 1982, he became a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
• He received the Europhysics Prize and the Guthrie Prize in 1985.
• He was awarded the Hughes Medal in 1987.
• In 2000, he received the first Nevill Mott Medal and Prize.
• He won the Royal Medal in 2005. This award recognized his major influence in the field of condensed matter physics. His work helped create the modern study of semiconductor nanostructures.
• He gave the Royal Society's Bakerian Lecture in 2004.
• In 2006, he received a knighthood from the Queen. This means he is now called "Sir" Michael Pepper.
• He was also made a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
• In 2010, he won the Swan Medal and Prize.
• He received the Faraday Medal in 2013.
• In 2019, he was awarded the Institute of Physics Isaac Newton Medal.

Research Interests

Sir Michael Pepper's research focuses on how tiny particles behave in materials. Some of his main interests include:

• How electric current and resistance change in very small steps.
• Measuring the charge of a single electron.
• Studying how electrons move in one-dimensional (like a wire) and zero-dimensional (like a tiny dot) spaces.
• How electrons move in general at the quantum level.
• How materials change from being able to conduct electricity to not.
• The properties of groups of electrons that interact strongly.
• Studying Bose–Einstein condensation in solid materials.
• Combining magnetic and semiconductor materials.
• Using physics in medicine and biology.

Media Appearances

Sir Michael Pepper has appeared on television. He was interviewed by his former PhD student, Ben Miller, on the BBC show Horizon. This episode was called What is One Degree and aired on January 10, 2011.

See also

• Quantum Hall effect