Sir

Michael Berry

FRS FRSE FRSA HonFInstP
Michael Berry holding Lorentz Medal
Michael Berry with Lorentz Medal, February 2015
Born
Michael Victor Berry

(1941-03-14) 14 March 1941 (age 82)
Surrey, England, United Kingdom
Alma materUniversity of Exeter
University of St. Andrews
Known forBerry phase
Berry connection and curvature
Berry–Robbins problem
Berry–Tabor conjecture
Weyl–Berry conjecture
Quantum carpet
Quantum chaos
AwardsMaxwell Medal and Prize (1978)
Fellow of the Royal Society (1982)
Lilienfeld Prize (1990)
Royal Medal (1990)
Dirac Medal (1990)
Naylor Prize and Lectureship (1992)
Knight Bachelor (1996)
Wolf Prize (1998)
Ig Nobel prize (2000)
Onsager Medal (2001)
Pólya Prize (2005)
Lorentz Medal (2014)
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of Bristol
ThesisThe diffraction of light by ultrasound (1965)
Doctoral advisorRobert Balson Dingle[1]
Doctoral studentsJenny Nelson
Jonathan Keating
Websitemichaelberryphysics.wordpress.com

Sir Michael Victor Berry, FRS, FRSE, FRSA, HonFInstP (born 14 March 1941), is a mathematical physicist at the University of Bristol, England.

He is known for the Berry phase, a phenomenon observed e.g. in quantum mechanics and optics, as well as Berry connection and curvature. He specialises in semiclassical physics (asymptotic physics, quantum chaos), applied to wave phenomena in quantum mechanics and other areas such as optics.

Education and early life

Berry was brought up in a Jewish family and was the son of a London taxi driver and a dressmaker.[2] Berry has a BSc in physics from the University of Exeter and a PhD from the University of St. Andrews.[3]

Career and research

He has spent his whole career at the University of Bristol: research fellow, 1965–67; lecturer, 1967–74; reader, 1974–78; Professor of Physics, 1978–88; Royal Society Research Professor 1988–2006. Since 2006 he is Melville Wills Professor of Physics (Emeritus) at Bristol University.[citation needed]

Publications

Awards and honours

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1982[6] and knighted in 1996.[7] From 2006 to 2012 he was editor of the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

Berry has been given the following prizes and awards:[8]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Michael Berry (physicist).

References

  1. ^ Michael Berry at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. ^ Rubinstein, William D.; Jolles, Michael; Rubinstein, Hilary L. (2011). The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 87. ISBN 9781403939104.
  3. ^ "Academic History of Professor Sir Michael Berry". University of Bristol. Retrieved 22 July 2009.
  4. ^ Longair, M. S. (1991). "Book review: Principles of cosmology and gravitation by M. V. Sims". Space Science Reviews. 56 (1–2): 246. Bibcode:1991SSRv...56..246L. doi:10.1007/BF00178416. S2CID 189795860.
  5. ^ "Professor Sir Michael Berry: Publications". University of Bristol, UK. Retrieved 2 September 2011.
  6. ^ "Fellows Directory". The Royal Society. Retrieved 3 May 2018.
  7. ^ "The London Gazette" (PDF). HMSO. Retrieved 3 May 2018.
  8. ^ "Professor Sir Michael Berry: Prizes and Awards". University of Bristol, UK. Retrieved 13 March 2011.
  9. ^ "LMS-NZMS Forder and Aitken Lectureships | London Mathematical Society". www.lms.ac.uk. Retrieved 13 November 2018.
  10. ^ "China building "Artificial Moon" that simulates low gravity with magnets". Futurism.com. Recurrent Ventures. Retrieved 17 January 2022. Interestingly, the facility was partly inspired by previous research conducted by Russian physicist Andrew Geim in which he floated a frog with a magnet. The experiment earned Geim the Ig Nobel Prize in Physics, a satirical award given to unusual scientific research. It's cool that a quirky experiment involving floating a frog could lead to something approaching an honest-to-God antigravity chamber.
  11. ^ Stephen Chen (12 January 2022). "China has built an artificial moon that simulates low-gravity conditions on Earth". South China Morning Post. Retrieved 17 January 2022. It is said to be the first of its kind and could play a key role in the country's future lunar missions. Landscape is supported by a magnetic field and was inspired by experiments to levitate a frog.
  12. ^ Berry, Michael (2003). "Making light of mathematics: 75th Gibbs Lecture". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.). 40 (2): 229–237. doi:10.1090/S0273-0979-03-00972-8. MR 1962297.
  13. ^ "Michael Berry". knaw.nl. KNAW. Retrieved 3 April 2022.
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