Sir John Pethica is Professor of Physics at Trinity College Dublin, and Chief Scientific Advisor at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington.
His work is in nano-mechanics, thin films, surface physics and microscopy. He was previously Professor of Materials Science at the University of Oxford, and has also worked in industry in the USA and Switzerland. In 2001 he moved to Dublin as Research Professor, and was the founding director of the CRANN Nanotechnology centre with the Naughton Institute and the Science Gallery. Awards received include the Rosenhain Medal of the IOM3 (1997), the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society (2001) and the Holweck Medal from the French Physical Society (2002).
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999 and became the Society’s Physical Secretary and Vice President in 2009.