Sir John Pendry has conducted pioneering work on the structure of surfaces and their interaction with electrons and photons. He founded the field of metamaterials with a negative refractive index. His work helped to pave the way for perfect lenses and other devices that focus light into a space smaller than its wavelength—beating the so-called "diffraction limit."

Pendry has published more than 200 scientific papers on subjects such as surface plasmons and negative refractive index materials. From 1975-1981 he worked at the Daresbury Laboratory, Cheshire. In 1981, he was appointed professor at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, where he was head of the Department of Physics and Principal of the Faculty of Physical Sciences. He is an honorary fellow of Downing College, Cambridge and an IEEE fellow. In 1984, he was named a Fellow of the Royal Society as well as a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. In 2004, he was knighted for his services to science.