Michael Christopher Payne is a British

theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain, and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experi ...

, working in the field of

computational physics Computational physics is the study and implementation of numerical analysis to solve problems in physics. Historically, computational physics was the first application of modern computers in science, and is now a subset of computational science ...

and theoretical

condensed matter physics Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid State of matter, phases, that arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms and elec ...

at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

. He is the creator of first principles total energy pseudopotential code

CASTEP CASTEP is a shared-source academic and commercial software package which uses density functional theory with a plane wave basis set to calculate the electronic properties of crystalline solids, surfaces, molecules, liquids and amorphous material ...

and has been involved in the development of the linear scaling code

ONETEP ONETEP (Order-N Electronic Total Energy Package) is a linear-scaling density functional theory software package able to run on parallel computers. It uses a basis of non-orthogonal generalized Wannier functions (NGWFs) expressed in terms of periodi ...

. He was the 23rd most highly cited physical scientist in the UK between 1990 and 1999, and has published more than 250 papers which have had over 22,000 citations. He studied at

Pembroke College, Cambridge Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college is the third-oldest college of the university and has over 700 students and fellows. It is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from ...

as an undergraduate and PhD student. He then spent a year in John Joannopoulos's group in the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

before returning to Pembroke College as a research fellow, and to the Theory of Condensed Matter (TCM) group in the

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...

where he had earlier completed his PhD. He became a university lecturer in 1994, a reader in 1998 and a professor in 2000. In 2019 he became the first holder of the

Ray Dolby Ray Milton Dolby (; January 18, 1933 – September 12, 2013) was an American engineer and inventor of the noise reduction system known as Dolby NR. He helped develop the video tape recorder while at Ampex and was the founder of Dolby Labora ...

Fellowship in Physics at Pembroke College. He was awarded the 1996

Maxwell Medal and Prize The Institute of Physics (IOP) awards numerous prizes to acknowledge contributions to physics research, education and applications. It also offers smaller specific subject-group prizes, such as for PhD thesis submissions. Bilateral awards * Th ...

by the

Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based not-for-profit learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, physics research, research and applied physics, application. It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide ...

and gave the 1998 Mott Lecture. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2008 and awarded the Swan Medal and Prize by the

in 2014. In 2011 he was made an honorary fellow of the

.Mike Payne, Honorary Fellow (IoP)
retrieved 12 Feb 2017 He succeeded Peter Littlewood as head of the TCM group in the Cavendish Laboratory, a post he held until 2013 when he was succeeded by Benjamin Simons.

References

External links

Mike Payne, TCM

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Payne, Mike British theoretical physicists Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of Pembroke College, Cambridge Maxwell Medal and Prize recipients Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Computational physicists