AFOSR Celebrates 60th Anniversary with Invited Speaker Sir John Pendry

  • Published
  • By Molly Lachance
  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research
AFOSR-funded researcher, Sir John Pendry spoke to a crowd of over 200 at the Air Force Institute of Technology's (AFIT) Kenney Hall Auditorium Monday as part of AFIT's regular speaker series and in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Pendry is well known as a condensed matter theorist and as the Chair in Theoretical Solid State Physics at the Imperial College in London where he has worked extensively on electronic and structural properties of surfaces developing the theory of low energy diffraction and electronic surface states.

One of his most notable achievements is a theory for the perfect lens that has no limits to resolution---a microscope that can resolve objects smaller than the wavelength of light.

In addition to this work, in 2006, Pendry collaborated with David Smith at Duke University to develop a theory to hide an arbitrary object from electromagnetic fields. Realizations of this concept have succeeded at radar and at visible wavelengths.

The simplicity of his concepts together with their vast potential impact have exciting implications for the future Air Force and science in general.

Pendry began his visit to Wright-Patterson AFB with overviews of the Materials and Manufacturing and Sensors directorates.. He participated in in-depth conversations with many of the Lab's top plasmonics and metamaterials researchers, including Dr. Augustine Urbas, Dr. Richard Vaia and others.

He then traveled to AFIT, where he toured the facilities and spoke to the institution's leadership about their work understanding light and its component electric and magnetic fields.

After his talk, Dr. Thomas Hussey, AFOSR Chief Scientist, presented Pendry with an official AFOSR 60th Anniversary coin, recognizing him for his outstanding contribution to AFOSR's sixty year history of funding the best and brightest researchers on the forefront of scientific discovery.

AFOSR will continue its collaboration with AFIT, with the next speaker series event to take place February 9, 2012 with Dr. James Gord, who is the Principal Research Chemist of AFRL's Propulsion Directorate and Director of the Combustion and Laser Diagnostics Research Complex. He is internationally recognized as a leader in the development and application of optical measurement techniques for advanced propulsion and fuel systems and will be speaking about applications of ultrafast lasers for optical measurements.



ABOUT AFOSR:
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research, located in Arlington, Virginia, continues to expand the horizon of scientific knowledge through its leadership and management of the Air Force's basic research program. As a vital component of the Air Force Research Laboratory, AFOSR's mission is to discover, shape and champion basic science that profoundly impacts the future Air Force.

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