Join us for the Frontiers in Natural Sciences: The Dean’s Annual Lecture 2025 online or in person.
Please do register your in person attendance by clicking the ‘Register Now’ button on the left hand side of the page.
For those joining in person, there will be a reception and showcase of metaphysics work following the lecture.
Summary
In the last few years a new area of research has emerged as a result of our ability to produce materials with entirely novel electromagnetic properties. Known as metamaterials because they take us beyond the properties of conventional materials, they display remarkable effects not found in nature, such as negative refraction.
Spurred on by these new opportunities, theorists have produced exotic concepts that exploit the new materials: we can now specify how to make a lens whose resolution is limited not by the laws of nature but only by our ability to build to the stated specifications; we can guide radiation along a trajectory, avoiding objects and causing them to appear invisible; we can design and manufacture materials that are active magnetically in the optical range.
The latest developments in the field aim to structure materials in time as well as in space – space/time crystals. These materials violate time reversal symmetry and offer possibilities for new devices. Theorists find them intriguing as they offer possibilities for creating Hawking radiation in the laboratory.
There has been a truly amazing amount of innovation but more is yet to come. The field of metamaterials is developing into a highly disruptive technology for a plethora of applications where control over light (or more generally electromagnetic radiation) is crucial, amongst them 5G/6G technology, satellite communications, solar energy harvesting, stealth, biological imaging and sensing, and enhanced MRI scanners.
About the Speaker
Sir John Pendry has worked at the Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, since 1981. His research at Imperial College reflects his broad interests in physics but has recently concentrated on optics and electromagnetism in general. In collaboration with scientists at The Marconi Company he designed a series of ‘metamaterials’ whose properties owed more to their micro-structure than to the constituent materials. The metamaterial concept caught on and now is a major topic not only of research activity, but also of application to 5G and 6G network technology, MRI, satellite communications and much else, though popular interest has concentrated on his design for a cloak of invisibility.