| Description | Bakerian Lecture
By Professor Sir John Pendry FRS
Imperial College London
Our ability to control light is limited by the materials available to us. John Pendry will introduce a new class of designer materials which refract light in an entirely novel manner and whose properties are engineered by controlling their nanostructure rather than their chemical composition. The new materials, often referred to as metamaterials, open new vistas in optics and offer the possiblity of super-high resolution lenses that can resolve details finer than the wavelength of light. The concepts have applications across much of the electromagnetic spectrum and examples will be given ranging from magnetic resonance imaging where frquencies of 21MHz are employed, through the GHz frequencies used in mobile telephony, up to optical frequencies where the new materials are canidates for wiring all-optical chips.
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