Plastic electronics pioneer Richard Friend

Cambridge University’s Cavendish Professorship, its most senior physics role, has an illustrious history; the first Cavendish Professor was the father of electromagnetic theory, James Clark Maxwell. The current incumbent, Richard Friend, likes to quote Maxwell’s inaugural lecture in 1873; he started his speech by saying: ’It is generally considered that there is nothing left to do in physics.’ But prediction, Friend says, ’is by definition something that you usually get wrong’.

Friend, who was knighted for services to physics in 2003, is perhaps best known for his pivotal role in developing plastic electronics, a technology that is about to hit the market in a big way and which has earned him a nomination for the biennial Millennium Technology Prize. Well suited to distributing electronic components over a wide area without the need for high temperatures and extreme vacuums of conventional electronics, plastic semiconductors are ideal for making display screens. Lightweight, potentially flexible and much less fragile than glass, such screens will be on sale in products such as e-readers by the end of this year.