Sir Michael Victor Berry (born 14 March 1941) is a British theoretical physicist. He is the Melville Wills Professor of Physics (Emeritus) at the University of Bristol.
Berry was brought up in a Jewish family and was the son of a London taxi driver and a dressmaker.[2] Berry earned a BSc in physics from the University of Exeter where he met his first wife (a sociology student with whom he had his first child)[3] and a PhD from the University of St. Andrews.[4] His thesis is titled The diffraction of light by ultrasound.[5]
Career and research
He has spent his whole career at the University of Bristol. He was a research fellow, 1965–67; lecturer, 1967–74; reader, 1974–78; Professor of Physics, 1978–88; and Royal Society Research Professor 1988–2006. Since 2006, he has been Melville Wills Professor of Physics (Emeritus) at Bristol University.[6]
Ig Nobel Prize for Physics, 2000 (shared with Andre Geim for "The Physics of Flying Frogs"). By 2022 his and Geim's Ig Nobel for the magnetic levitation of a frog was reportedly part of the inspiration for China's lunar gravity research facility.[12][13]
^"China building "Artificial Moon" that simulates low gravity with magnets". Futurism.com. Recurrent Ventures. 12 January 2022. 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.
