Sir Michael Victor Berry, (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.
Berry was brought up in a Jewish family and was the son of a London taxi driver and a dressmaker. Berry has a BSc in physics from the University of Exeter and a PhD from the University of St. Andrews.
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.
Diffraction of Light by Ultrasound, 1966
Principles of Cosmology and Gravitation, 1976;
About 395 research papers, book reviews, etc., on physics
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1982 and knighted in 1996. 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:
Maxwell Medal and Prize, Institute of Physics, 1978
Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London, 1982
Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, 1983
Elected Fellow of the Royal Institution, 1983
Elected Member of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden, 1986
Bakerian Lecturer, Royal Society, 1987
Elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, 1989
Dirac Medal and Prize, Institute of Physics, 1990
Lilienfeld Prize, American Physical Society, 1990
Royal Medal, Royal Society, 1990
Naylor Prize and Lectureship in Applied Mathematics, London Mathematical Society, 1992
Foreign Member: US National Academy of Sciences, 1995
Dirac Medal, International Centre for Theoretical Physics, 1996
Kapitsa Medal, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1997
Wolf Prize for Physics, Wolf Foundation, Israel, 1998
Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics, 1999
Forder Lectureship, London Mathematical Society, 1999
Foreign Member: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2000
Ig Nobel Prize for Physics, 2000 (shared with Andre Geim for "The Physics of Flying Frogs").