Wheatstone Lecture 2026: Sir John Pendry

Regarded as the founder of the metamaterials field, Sir John Pendry, Chair in Theoretical Solid State Physics at Imperial College London, will explain how metamaterials are revolutionising our understanding of electromagnetism by enabling properties and effects never before seen in nature.

The lecture will explore the extraordinary innovations in metamaterials and their potential to reshape the future of science and technology. A drinks reception will follow.

Metamaterials open new horizons in electromagnetism

In recent years, the ability to design and fabricate materials with entirely new electromagnetic properties has given rise to the exciting field of metamaterials. 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.

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 for example in 5G/6G technology, satellite communications, solar energy harvesting, stealth, biological imaging and sensing, and enhanced MRI scanners.

The lecture will conclude with a look at cutting-edge research into space-time crystals, materials structured in both space and time that break time-reversal symmetry. These developments not only offer possibilities for new devices but also raise fascinating theoretical possibilities, such as simulating Hawking radiation in laboratory settings.

Speaker bio:

Sir John Pendry is Chair in Theoretical Solid State Physics at Imperial College London. John is a condensed matter theorist and has worked at Imperial since 1981. He began his career in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. After a year at Bell Laboratories he spent six years at the Daresbury Laboratory where he headed the theoretical group.

He is generally regarded as the founder of the field of metamaterials, completely novel materials with properties not found in nature that owe their properties to internal structure rather than chemical composition. These materials can have remarkable properties such as negative refractive index and lenses that break the diffraction limit, enabling the realisation of a prototype cloaking device, so-called “invisibility cloaks”. His most recent work – META4D – adds the dimension of time to their structure.