Awards & Winners

John Pethica

John Pethica FRS is Science Foundation Ireland professor of material science at Trinity College, Dublin, and a visiting professor at Oxford University. In 2001, Pethica was one of the first ten people awarded an S.F.I. principal investigator award. Following the award, he transferred his activities from Oxford to Dublin. He is also a Vice-President and Physical Secretary of the Royal Society. John Pethica was a pupil at St Ambrose College, Trafford, Manchester. He received a PhD from the University of Cambridge in the late 1970s. In 1999 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. The 2001 recipient of the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society of London, Pethica is most noted for his work on the development of atom resolution atomic force microscopy. As of February 2005, it has been announced that Pethica will be the director of 'Naughton Institute' which will house CRANN, a new purpose built nanotechnology centre in Trinity College Dublin. From October 2007 Pethica is the Chief Scientist at the UK's National Physical Laboratory, the UK’s National Measurement Institute. John Pethica is also an accomplished musician - playing violin and other instruments - with a particular interest in Irish and British folk-music.

Awards by John Pethica

Check all the awards nominated and won by John Pethica.

2001


Hughes Medal
(For his contributions to the field of nanometre and atomic scale mechanics. He invented and developed the technique of nanoindentation thereby revolutionising the mechanical characterisation of ultra-small volumes of materials. This has had a major influence on those industries concerned with thin film and coating technologies.)